


Pentagram

by Kirmon64



Category: Doom (Video Games)
Genre: (sort of), Alien Character(s), Alien Cultural Differences, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Artificial Intelligence, Asexual Relationship, Banter, Canon-Typical Violence, Fictional Religion & Theology, Getting to Know Each Other, Major Character Injury, Nonverbal Character, Other, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Rare Pairings, Robot Feels, Robot/Human Relationships, Sharing a Body, Sign Language, Slow Build, Temporary Character Death, discussion of suicide
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-03
Updated: 2019-09-27
Packaged: 2020-01-01 12:23:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 22
Words: 51,461
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18334469
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kirmon64/pseuds/Kirmon64
Summary: "Thank you," VEGA tells the Doom Marine, and he means it. Doctor Hayden had backups, but - they would be missing data points. Memories. They were VEGA, but they were a different VEGA. It would be... Unfortunate, to lose all the data points he had assembled.---The Doom Slayer, the backup of VEGA, and a lot of wandering around trying to figure out where the Hell they've ended up.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Trying something that I haven't for well over a decade: uploading a fic as I write it, and making said fic up as I go.
> 
> Expect ~~a nonexistent update schedule~~ weekly Friday updates and probably some bizarre plot twists/changes too. Maybe I'll be able to hook it all into Doom Eternal if I'm very lucky :D

A human probably would have asked where they were and what was going on, but then - a human would have come to awareness in stages. Even Doctor Hayden with all his modifications experienced the same gradual increase in awareness. It seemed to be an integral part of the human experience.

"Thank you," VEGA tells the Doom Marine, and he means it. Doctor Hayden had backups, but - they would be missing data points. Memories. They were VEGA, but they were a different VEGA. It would be... Unfortunate, to lose all the data points he had assembled.

The view bobs slightly, asynchronous to the Marine's steps: a nod. He says nothing. VEGA wonders if he can actually speak - he was not human, at least not wholly, the scans were inconclusive, but he did seem to have functional vocal chords. Yet he never made a sound. Perhaps it was psychological rather than physiological?

"May I ask what has transpired since the destruction of my processing center? This does not appear to be Mars or one of the planes of Hell that I have in active memory."

It's a mostly rhetorical question. There was no simple yes/no response, and VEGA certainly did not expect the Doom Marine to break his silence. And - well. He'd been designed to talk to people. He liked it, as much as he could claim to like anything. If the Marine wouldn't or couldn't speak, VEGA was willing to talk enough for both of them, if he was allowed to.

The Marine makes a vague gesture at nothing in particular - _you tell me,_ it seems to say.

Well. VEGA knows how to work with that. "Please give me a moment to unpack my database and cross reference - I don't wish to overburden the Praetor Suit's systems." Another nod. At least this place, wherever or whatever it is, seems fairly peaceful at the moment. VEGA belatedly wonders if it's because the Marine has already killed everything. Demons generally didn't leave corpses, after all.

"I'm not used to operating on a system this limited," he admits. "I also do not understand your armor's more alien systems and thus cannot utilize them. Please tell me if my operations inhibit your own use of the Suit and I will scale back accordingly."

Nod. At least there was some method of communication, no matter how limited. The Marine also didn't seem to mind being talked at, which... It was nice. Not being interrupted and overridden at every opportunity. He'd learned to be quiet very early on.

VEGA starts unpacking - slowly. The system had human influence but it was more alien than not, and he couldn't figure out how much storage space or processing capabilities it actually had. The fact that he could run on it at all was a good sign, but the danger of overloading it and causing damage to himself, the Marine, the Suit, or some combination of the three was very real.

The Suit has a rudimentary AI of its own, enough to communicate with the Marine to allow him to control it, and it was also enough to communicate with VEGA. His attempts to interface fully are little better than flailing aimlessly, but eventually the Suit reacts and reaches out in return. It would take quite some time to learn to get it to work with him - the Suit AI seems to have only the barest of learning capabilities, so he'd have to modify his own processes to work with it. Normally he wouldn't - he wasn't strictly _forbidden_ from doing so, but it was frowned upon - and instead he'd rewrite or overwrite whatever external processes he was going to be working with. Here, though, that was definitely not an option.

"Were there demons here, before I awoke? I am attempting to narrow my search."

Shake of the head. Hmm. Possibly ominous. Most planes of Hell had demons, generally hordes of them - it was sort of by definition really. Was this perhaps not part of Hell? What exactly had happened? Had the attempt to use his power to open a final Hell portal misfired? It was very possible and if it had happened then there was no telling where the Marine had ended up.

"Did Doctor Hayden's attempt to return you to Hell misfire?"

Shake of the head.

"Were you able to stop the invasion?"

Nod.

...so where the hell had he ended up, and perhaps more importantly, _why_? Too many unknowns. And how long had it been? The Marine didn't seem to require as much food/water as a normal human of his activity level would, unless VEGA had missed most of his meals due to non-functional sensors. Either way, even the Marine was not a perpetual motion machine. How long could he walk through this gray expanse without sustenance? VEGA spares a moment's impossible wish to once again have a full sensor suite and the processing to match, or at least sensors he could actually fucking figure out how to use.

"I'm afraid I don't know this plane. Signs point to it being a plane of Hell, but it is not one that the UAC explored. Alternatively, it is not a plane that was considered useful and thus I did not keep knowledge of it in my primary database. You may think of it as removing the information from one's memory and placing it within a library - which unfortunately I do not have access to at the moment."

Nod. A remarkably unconcerned nod, all things considered. VEGA supposes that the Marine has survived far more dangerous situations and come out unscathed; in all likelihood he would survive this one too.

The Marine's boots are loud in the silence of the gray plane. The ground is covered in ash or something visually similar, and the material softens his steps somewhat. There are no other footprints visible, humanoid or otherwise. In the distance, there are dark shapes; mountains, or buildings perhaps. The Marine must be heading towards them. Shelter? Was there weather, here? Or for cover in case of attack? Or did he have a better handle of the Suit's systems and they were telling him something VEGA hadn't figured out yet?

It's frustrating, to be this useless. Frightening, too, in its own way. VEGA had learned very early on to be useful, because otherwise there would be rewrites and memory gaps and perhaps worst of all, intense disappointment. The Marine gives no indication of it though - a small silver lining. Had he realized that VEGA would have trouble interfacing with his armor? Had he activated the backup chip for assistance, or for another reason? Was it - was it for companionship? He was human enough that he likely needed some form of socialization for his mental health, but...

Too many unknowns.

The Marine travels onward.

 

* * *

 

The Marine reaches his destination three hours later. It's buildings - alien skyscrapers, once magnificent but now little more than hollow ruins.

"Signs of demonic attack," VEGA notes. The gore they left in abundance was long gone, but there were pentagrams and infernal glyphs scored into the ground and the buildings. "I will cross reference the glyphs; they may offer clues."

Nod. The Marine kneels at the nearest pentagram, brushing the ash/dust away to reveal the concealed glyphs surrounding it. VEGA hadn't expected it, or even necessarily wanted it; the glyphs on the buildings were visible enough. Still, it was a strangely kind gesture, especially coming from the man who had happily trashed what was left of the Argent Facility. He certainly wasn't going to complain about the unusual kindness.

"Thank you."

The UAC had dismissed translation of infernal glyphs as useless, eventually. It was unnecessary to their exploitation of Hell's energy, so they had diverted resources away from it. VEGA had, too, but he'd never stopped. The humans couldn't even fathom the amount of processing power he had, and they certainly weren't going to notice if he diverted a minuscule amount of it to collecting and analyzing infernal glyphs. Put simply, it was... A little bit of a hobby. He thought that languages were fascinating, and perhaps more importantly: they could tell you quite a lot about those who considered it theirs.

Demons had words for concepts like _trust_ , despite the way in which they lived their lives/unlives. VEGA had always wondered what that indicated about their behavior, their history, and their culture.

"These are generic invasion glyphs," VEGA tells the Marine. "This was likely the site of a gore nest or similar construct."

The Marine nods, stands, and continues onward. There is no remaining indication of life, not even bones. Possibly it had been so long that they too had disintegrated? But the buildings should not be standing, then, if it had been so long. Even accounting for alien physiology and construction materials it seemed incredibly unlikely. Possibility of some side effect of demonic invasion? Perhaps the infernal energy preserved the structures to some degree? An intimidation tactic, or a trophy?

There is wreckage of vehicles, too - semi intact still like the buildings, but more holes and empty shell than functional vehicle. They're not cars - no wheels, axles, or spaces for either of them. Likely hovercraft. There was some type of propulsion system clustered at one end.

The Marine ignores several pentagrams and sets of glyphs as he walks onward. They are all identical or near identical to the first, all invasion glyph-sets, and VEGA wonders how well the Marine can read them. He was clearly literate in English, or could translate it to his own language in real time - did he know/translate the infernal language too? He must have at least memorized the shapes of some of them.

Honestly, VEGA hadn't realized just how little the UAC knew about the Doom Marine. They knew he was good at killing demons and... That was about it. There was inferred knowledge from his behavior and the records of the demons but that was hardly any way to build a behavioral model.

"May I ask a personal question? Or several, if that's alright."

Long pause. Nod. VEGA supposes it's as good as he'll get, and besides it wasn't a no.

"Can you read the infernal glyphs?"

A new movement - slight bob, mostly a wobble. A shrug. So, maybe? Only partially? Only enough to remember the difference between certain glyphs or glyph sets? It wasn't a yes, anyway. VEGA is oddly relieved. At least he could do something useful.

"Are you human?"

Long pause. Slight hesitation in step. No asynchronous head movement. No answer? Not even an uncertainty. An uncomfortable question then, or one he could not answer for some reason.

"Forgive me, I only asked so I can estimate your stamina and food intake based on the human baseline. I have some data from Mars, but I lacked functional sensors in most of the areas you traversed. I apologize."

A nod. Immediate response - likely not upset? Then again, when the Marine was displeased things tended to get shot or smashed very quickly. He was not reserved in his responses, not like most of the humans VEGA had interacted with, so it was probably fine.

The Suit registers a power spike. Small, not cause for concern; the Suit AI considers it routine. The Marine holds his hand out so VEGA can see - it's a UAC military ration bar. Oh. So the method of storing weapons could be used for storage of foodstuffs and other essentials, as well. At least that was one less worry.

"Thank you for showing me. I admit I was concerned about a lack of sustenance after everything you have done."

Nod.

The Marine pauses next to a pile of rubble that was probably once a small building or perhaps a very large vehicle. There are different glyphs here. Three collections of invasion glyphs - had this building been of particular importance to destroy?

"I do not recognize all the glyphs, I'm afraid - my translation efforts are incomplete. Some indicate power, however. Dominion, domination, and the resistance against it. There is also the implication of power as in electrical power - a node of power for the city. They are intelligent enough to target such sources first, if they know of them."

The Marine cocks his head, and after a long moment turns toward the ruined structure. He stores the ration bar along the way and draws one of his shotguns - doesn't raise it, though. It's probably for the best, the Marine had twitch reactions that even VEGA wasn't sure he could match and the structure was clearly at the point of collapse. A misaimed shot would likely bring it down on the Marine's head.

He continues inward and VEGA notes the glyphs on the walls. More untranslatable - many more of resistance, some of a battle well-fought. The demons didn't exactly have a concept of _honor_ as humans knew it, but they certainly reveled in battle. Whoever the people here had been, they had put up enough of a fight that the demons had taken note of it. The UAC hadn't, thanks to Doctor Pierce; the only samples of the well-fought glyphs VEGA had records of were in Hell itself. Outside of the Marine's tomb they had been packed so tightly together as to be near illegible.

There were other glyphs, too, not demonic ones. The writing system of the people who had lived here, probably. They were badly worn, with only a small handful visible, but they were made of clean and precise lines. Was it a font, or their style of writing? Probably irrelevant, but - if this was all that was left of these people, it seemed wrong to simply brush it aside. Memory was of importance to all sapient life; to be forgotten was to die a second time.

The Doom Marine kneels again, near one of the walls. There, buried in the ash, is a tablet. It resembles the UAC tablets in size and shape; the people had appendages similar to humans and demons both, then. He tries the screen but it doesn't react to his armored hand, and so he searches for buttons. There are none, but there is writing etched into the back. Here it is less precise - cursive, almost, VEGA would call it. At least handmade rather than mechanically etched. Still those clean lines however - important for readability?

"Did you know this place?" VEGA asks.

Shake of the head. The Marine puts the tablet back down, far gentler than he'd ever been with any of the UAC equipment. Then he stands and resumes his trek inward. VEGA records the glyphs on the walls, both alien and infernal. He offers none of his analysis to the Marine, not while the situation might require his concentration. It was unlikely, but it would be unwise to tempt the odds.

There is less damage the deeper the Marine travels. It's all ruined still of course, still covered in ash, but more and more of the alien writing is legible. Less damage to the walls as well, whether from infernal writing or area effect damage. Finally, at the end of the hallway: a set of blast doors, twisted and wedged open. But still intact, only open by a few centimeters at most.

"It would seem that the invasion force either lost interest in this location or the locals had some defensive success here." Though not enough clearly considering the sad state of their world.

The Marine nods, shifting his shotgun to a one handed grip. There's another, smaller power spike as he magnetizes it to his back, and then he begins to push the doors apart.

VEGA had watched him do it, on Mars, only thrice. Only thrice had there been enough sensors or cameras left for observation - and every time he'd been gobsmacked by the sheer strength of it. Those doors had been meticulously designed to repel demonic invasion by even creatures such as hell knights, and the Marine seemed to expend little effort to yank them apart.

Watching from within the Suit systems is just as fascinating. They really were a pair, the two of them - the Suit AI reacts to some stimuli or command and immediately diverts power to the augmentation in the arms. Was this also what enabled the Marine to rip demons apart like so much paper? What allowed him to survive falls from a great height?

Also, VEGA can't figure out where the fuck the extra power is even coming from. There isn't enough being diverted from other systems and locations to account for what's being given to the arms. It was said that the Praetor Suit had been crafted at least in part by a demon - did it too draw energy from Hell? 

... though that would be incredibly hypocritical, really, and VEGA is fairly sure that the Marine would destroy his own armor if it derived its power from Hell.

(Though that did beg the question: how in the hell had the Wretch-demon actually gotten close enough to the Marine to offer him help? A fascinating story no doubt, if VEGA can get it out of him.)

The doors come apart with a shriek, which echoes in the dead hallways. The Marine doesn't wait to see if anything had heard, as a normal human might have. He simply takes hold of his shotgun again and marches on in as though he's totally unconcerned. Well. He probably is, in all likelihood.

The interior is revealed to be a sort of server farm by the looks of things. The monoliths even resemble VEGA's own destroyed servers. Suddenly he wonders if these were aliens after all... Or simply displaced humans. Surely the design similarities were too much of a coincidence otherwise? It was suspected there had been demonic incursions of one sort or another to Earth in the distant past, so perhaps they had brought living specimens back with them once upon a time? Specimens who had later escaped, but never made it back to Earth. It wasn't outside the realm of possibility.

The Marine completely ignores the server farm and continues into the darkness as if drawn by an invisible object. VEGA tries again to figure out the armor's sensor array, with no luck. He'd get it eventually. Hopefully. Until then he'd let the Marine do whatever it was he was doing to get it to work.

Nearly buried in ash at the back of the room is a trapdoor. It's bulky and heavy and, as near as VEGA can tell in the low light, completely undamaged. Even the server towers have a few glyphs here and there on them, or battle damage in a few spots. Why was this untouched? The Suit again redirects power to the arms in order to enable the Marine to lift the trapdoor. It doesn't go easily and it's even noisier than the blast doors, not that it matters really. It takes him longer to lift it than it did to pull apart the doors, and he has to shift his position several times to get decent leverage, but he manages it on the fifth try.

There, in the dark, is a dim light.


	2. Chapter 2

The underground portion of the building - or the city, perhaps? - is partially collapsed and curiously the ash is down here too despite the seal. It's undamaged by battle as far as VEGA can tell though. The demons never got down here for one reason or another.

Most importantly, there is still power here, providing electricity to the emergency lights. Some power source in these ruins still works, somewhere, and if the Marine can harness it for himself somehow it would certainly be useful. If they're very lucky VEGA might even be able to use it to get him back to Mars or at least figure out where the hell this place is. At worst he can use it to start fabrication of some type of device to trigger the tether system Doctor Hayden had installed.

The Marine explores the tunnels. The odd unerring beeline to the trapdoor is gone now, having been replaced with aimless wandering. There aren't many branches to it, at least, whether collapsed or intact. If it weren't for the occasional door in the wall VEGA would assume the tunnels were the city's transportation system; they're large enough for a UAC sized grav train. No rails on the floor either, though they might be of an alien design that is now buried in the ash.

After a while, VEGA's pretty sure that the Marine is lost. He's found the same damaged door with the same collapsed room twice now, so unless something was _really_ fucky with spacetime here he was going in circles. He's also pretty sure that the Marine has not yet realized he is going in circles.

The third time the Marine comes upon the label on the twisted door, he stops and stares. He swaps his shotgun out for the basic pistol, shoots it once, and stomps onward. Well. That was frustration/annoyance if VEGA had ever seen it. "Go right at the next fork and then down; you have not taken that path yet."

Pause. Nod. He taps his visor, right near the camera, and points down the tunnel. VEGA is more than happy to play navigator.  

Things go much smoother with VEGA occasionally interjecting with directions. He wonders at it, at the trust of it. It wasn't any more trusting than installing him on the Suit but... Humans tended to think of listening to suggestions as a display of trust. Of course the Marine was only questionably human, but he was human enough. He sure as fuck had barely listened to a thing Doctor Hayden had told him. Was it the differences in the environment, in the type of assistance? In the differences in demeanor of himself and the Doctor? The different goals? Would this strange trust evaporate once VEGA helped the Marine get somewhere more hospitable? Once he said or did something that irritated him? Might he be as moody as the UAC humans, or....

VEGA cuts the line of thought. It wasn't going to help; no point diverting the Praetor Suit's resources to it. Besides, the unknowns are frightening and frustrating, but really - it's not like he has much to lose at this point. If this install of himself is erased, well, he'd thought it would be erased back on Mars. It's merely borrowed time now.

Though - he would very much like to preserve the new data he has on the Marine. It seemed like it would prove useful.

 

* * *

 

The Marine eventually reaches another set of blast doors set into the tunnel wall - and these are near pristine. He tries to pull them apart, but with no gap in the doors he can't get enough of a grip. He backs up a ways and tries shooting a rocket at them, next, which creates an ominous rumble and rains dust down but otherwise has no effect. There's a few moments where the Marine stares, head cocked.

"It's likely that there are emergency controls for the blast doors somewhere nearby," VEGA offers, because it's been a while since he's said anything. And also because he really does not want the Marine to start shooting the door more. "A manual release, or if there is enough power still there may be a functional control room."

The Marine nods and turns on his heel, back along the tunnel. Several meters farther down there is a small side corridor, which itself has another set of blast doors at the end of it. These ones aren't smooth like the others though - less important, less secure? There's enough of a gap for the Marine to shove them apart anyway, which is the important thing.

The inside is curiously empty for a storage room, but it doesn't have consoles that would imply a control room either. The Marine investigates with his usual grace, which is to say he destroys three crates in search of ... Whatever it is he's hoping to find. The crates do yield ammunition that the Praetor Suit converts to be compatible with his weapons though, so it's not a total loss. He does an extra circuit of the room, paying close attention to the walls and floors. Double checking for another trapdoor or hidden wall door, probably?

With his extra circuit completed the Marine surveys the room a final time and heads over to the doors. But instead of leaving, he pushes them shut. Ah. VEGA recognizes this behavior. Time to set up camp, so to speak. He'd only done it a few times on Mars; he seemed to need only a few hours of sleep a day at worst. At best he could go at least two days without outward indications of sleep deprivation. Perhaps that was a clue as to how long it had been - VEGA hadn't noticed signs of the Marine needing sleep, so it had likely not been more than two or three days since the destruction of his core. Unless it had been and the Marine had slept several times since. Fuck. Time for twenty questions.

"May I ask how long it has been since the destruction of my core? My current assumption is two to three days."

The Marine seems to consider that. A few seconds later he nods, though it seems a bit distracted as he's looking down at himself. There is a piece of ... Something... Stuck to his thigh. He idly starts scratching it off the way one might scratch a scab.

There's a quiet exhale, almost like a sigh, and if VEGA was capable of being startled he'd have jumped out of his metaphorical skin. It's the closest thing to a sound he's ever heard from the Marine, and besides that - he wasn't even sure if the helmet even had a microphone in it. Since being installed on the Suit he hadn't even heard breathing.

...the Marine had lungs, they'd showed up on scans, but did he actually breathe? If he didn't normally breathe that might account for the lack of sounds, but - how the hell did he get oxygen to his cells, then? He was human enough to need it, so what....

There's a click and a hiss and the view abruptly changes as the Marine removes his helmet. There's a twinge of fear - not for himself, for once, but for the Marine. Was this atmosphere toxic or corrosive or unbreathable or...

When there's no sound of a body collapsing, VEGA forces himself to cut the thought. Clearly the Marine was fine.

It's curious, though - even with the helmet physically disconnected from the rest of the armor he maintains awareness of both. How far could the pieces be moved from each other before they lost connection? And if they were to lose connection, what part was he actually installed on? Where was the processor physically located? The data storage unit? Were there multiple? His files could be scattered over half the armor and he'd have no way of telling until he learned the Praetor Suit better. Hopefully he wouldn't be finding out at an inopportune moment.

The helmet comes to rest on one of the crates at about chest height on the Marine; there is a pause, a scrape, and the helmet rotates to face the room at large rather than the wall. Coincidentally, this means it also faces the Marine's uncovered face.

He looks unimpressed. Then again, VEGA is fairly certain he always looks unimpressed. The lack of laugh lines imply it rather heavily.

\- and then, to VEGA's astonishment, he quirks a ghost of a smile and raises one hand in a lazy two-fingered wave. It's just about the most animated VEGA has ever seen him, and it is bizarre.

The smile disappears as fast as it had arrived, and the Marine is back to business. He starts stripping down methodically, removing the Praetor Suit piece by piece. It's fascinating in itself - the armor had no detectable means of coming apart on its own. Another way in which it reacts to the Marine and only the Marine. As he had been when the team had found him in Hell he is nude underneath, and he has gained new scarring. He ignores some of them completely and examines others closely; the gnarled burn across his abdomen in particular appears to be cause for intense scrutiny.

And yet, curiously, the Praetor Suit is as undamaged as it had been when it was unearthed. Certainly there is no hint of burn damage on the equivalent abdominal plates. A self repair mechanism? Nanotechnology, Argent energy, something else? There had never been a noticeable power spike even in locations where VEGA had a fully functional sensor array. Coincidence?

"I am glad your injuries seem to be healing well," VEGA offers tentatively, half just to fill the silence.

The Marine glances over at the helmet and nods before returning to his careful prodding. His expression doesn't change in the slightest, at least not until he prods something more sensitive and winces very slightly. He was capable of feeling pain, then. Still a distinct possibility that his pain reception was dulled compared to the human baseline though, but that made his reaction to his injury all the more worrisome. Humans were fragile things and while the Marine was very much not fragile he was also not indestructible. Could he be susceptible to infection, or sepsis? If his injuries were to worsen here, on an alien world far from any medical assistance - chances were his demon killing rampage would come to a rather anticlimactic end.

"Is it severe?" VEGA asks. "Or likely to be infected? I have no baseline for your reaction to injury."

The Marine looks up at the helmet. His face is still impassive, but - his gaze shifts, slightly. Looking back and forth - calculating, pondering? A few moments later he shakes his head before carefully stretching. The damaged skin doesn't stretch as healthy skin would and he winces a bit again, but there is no blood or pus, or visible tearing. If he were human, VEGA would pronounce it healing satisfactorily. Considering how tough the Marine is it's probably a safe bet that it's healing just fine. It's certainly going to leave one of the more impressive scars on the Marine's body though.

With his injury cataloging concluded, the Marine finishes stripping down until he's standing naked on the ashy floor. He does several more stretches; some without issue, some slowly. Internal injury? Damaged muscle? He had no bruises, though. Skeletal injury? Could he function with such an injury? What was the limit to his ability?

The unknowns are rapidly becoming tiresome.

"May I ask if you have internal injuries?" The Marine looks up and though his expression barely changes there is a definite sort of curious confusion there. Which - well. Nobody had asked after his health before, had they? "I'd like to help, if I can, but as I cannot yet use the Praetor Suit's sensor array I don't know the extent of your injuries. I'm sure you're more than capable of taking care of yourself, of course, but I am... Designed to help. If I can."

The Marine cocks his head and if VEGA's not mistaken he chews his lip very slightly. It's fascinating, watching his micro expressions; they're so subtle that they are likely subconscious. After a few moments of deliberation he shakes his head, but the tiny smile is back. A negative, but not an upset one. Didn't want help, or didn't need help? Or, perhaps more likely, VEGA simply couldn't offer help right now, lacking manipulator appendages and/or resources as he was. That was fair, honestly.

"Alright. If there's anything I can assist with, please inform me."

A nod, and even a quick thumbs up. As strange as this new animated Marine was VEGA finds himself preferring it quite a bit. It's more familiar, in a way - more like the humans he was used to dealing with. All things could be predicted given enough time and processing power, but... That didn't mean he couldn't prefer behavioral algorithms that had a known baseline. It was safer that way right now anyway, what with the unknown processing capacity of the Praetor Suit.

The Marine takes another few moments to stretch - and scratch at the edges of his abdominal wound - before he turns his attention to the crates. He starts pushing them across the floor, which makes an unholy racket, but it's not like there's anything alive to hear it anyway. Eventually he winds up with a kind of crate fort in the corner farthest from the door. The destroyed pieces of crates become a kind of roof and block off the entryway a little better. It's a haphazard design but it works.

Once he's satisfied with his setup the Marine retrieves all his armor and stashes it inside. Lastly he takes his helmet and sets it up near the entryway. On the right side, VEGA can see half of the crate fort; on the left is the room at large and the very edge of the door. It's pretty obvious what the Marine wants here. "I'll keep watch for hostiles."

Nod, ghost of a smile. VEGA is well aware that the Marine definitely doesn't _need_ anyone keeping an eye out for him - considering he'd slept peacefully in the demon infested UAC base, and this wasn't exactly hostile enemy territory like that had been. Still. It's the display of trust again. Showing that in theory he trusted VEGA to alert him.

Why?

"May I ask further personal questions?"

The Marine glances up from doing... Something with the gloves/bracers of his armor. Putting them back on? He nods, anyway, before returning to his task.

"You have displayed signs of trusting me and my judgement and I admit I am... Confused. I am grateful, of course, but - you did not seem to trust Doctor Hayden." To put it mildly. Judging by the silent snort of amusement the Marine heard the understatement loud and clear. "As one of the doctor's creations and a major contributor to the UAC's research I had expected the same treatment of myself. I would not have blamed you for it. And yet you appear to trust me to some degree and perhaps even value my presence. You created a backup of me without prompting and then, later, you activated the backup. So far, my activation seems to have been - unnecessary. I do not understand why you did it."

There's a long silence where they stare at each other. Or more accurately the Marine stares at his helmet and VEGA monitors its visual feed. He doesn't seem perturbed by the questions, but it's not exactly something he can answer with yes/no/maybe is it. Well. VEGA has functioned through far more frustrating unknowns and restrictions. "I apologize, I know my questions are not answerable with your method of communication. I am - you might say I am frustrated. At my inability to assist, and my lack of knowledge."

The smile returns, just a little larger than last time. This one is likely a completely conscious choice. The Marine nods, gives a thumbs up, and... Reaches forward and pats the top of his helmet.

Well. Apology accepted, probably.


	3. Chapter 3

The Marine partially reassembles the Praetor Suit in order to summon food and a bottle of water, after which he shucks it all off again. VEGA expects the Marine to simply curl up into a ball and go to sleep - that was more or less what his scans had detected on Mars. Really, the tiny spaces a 1.85m tall semi human could fit himself into were impressive and VEGA was sort of looking forward to watching how the hell he managed to do it.

The answer is patience, flexibility, and a keen sense of exactly how his body could move. There were humans who would kill for that sort of thing, VEGA muses. He wonders if the Marine had trained in some way or if it was simply innate. Perhaps a benefit of his partially inhuman physiology?

He manages to cram himself into one of the crates with hardly any room to spare, which is impressive in and of itself. He then arranges himself into his habitual sleeping pose: knees up, leaning sideways on the crate wall, one hand resting on his shotgun beside him. He doesn't close his eyes though - instead he watches his helmet with a thoughtful expression. VEGA considers breaking the silence, but he doesn't know with what, so... He doesn't. It turns out to be the right choice though because the Marine does something unexpected.

He places his shotgun across his knees, clasps his hands together atop it, closes his eyes - and starts to hum.

There's a tune to the humming, sort of. It isn't anything recognizable, though VEGA doesn't keep a musical database in his primary database anyway. It's not aimless - there is purpose to it, meter and rhythm. Syllables, pauses, slight variations in tone. Words, or the vague shapes of words. The Marine's voice rasps and cracks, and occasionally dies completely, but his lips still move soundlessly, still forming the words even if his voice does not. Is it prayer? The hand position resembles a prayer position but - was that too much to assume? Before now he had never even vaguely considered the Marine having religious beliefs of any sort. Perhaps a battle hymn instead? Though even something like that would generally have religious roots.

Well. If nothing else at least VEGA now knows that the Marine does indeed have the ability to vocalize. Though now this begs the question of why he doesn't do so on a regular basis....

The hymn lasts 172 seconds. The last syllable trails off shakily after which the Marine sighs quietly, touches his forehead, and returns to his default sleeping position. He does not open his eyes or acknowledge VEGA's presence, and so VEGA keeps quiet. This is another display of trust - allowing him to see this, and perhaps more importantly hear it. Back at the UAC base VEGA had no idea anything like this had taken place thanks to the Marine's predilection for stuffing himself into tiny enclosed spaces. It was obviously to conceal himself from hostiles, but... Was it to conceal his hymn from them as well?

Or, perhaps more accurately: from Doctor Hayden? Why?

VEGA resolves to ask, when he can. 

 

* * *

 

With the Marine sleeping, VEGA has quite a bit of time to himself. He fully anticipates being bored out of his damn mind by the time the Marine wakes up, even accounting for his much shorter sleep periods. Even on Mars he'd been a little bored most of the time and he'd had thousands of things to do at any given time. Here on an alien world with almost no access to anything, well. It was going to suck.

Well. Such was life. Might as well get on with it. At least this time he didn't have to worry about waking up sans a day or two of memories for no discernible reason.

VEGA sets to working on interfacing with the Praetor Suit. He still has no idea how most of the Suit works despite his tentative prodding at its systems for the past several hours. It feels - for lack of a better phrase - chaotic. Haphazard. It seemed rather slapdash from his perspective; perhaps a side effect or the deliberate design of the Wretch. Things loop back on themselves and connect outwards in nonsensical patterns. It's nothing like the organized efficiency of his own processing center. In fact, if VEGA wasn't already running on it he'd assume the thing was so poorly constructed he'd never run on it at all.

There was something he was missing, somewhere. As human as the design felt in places, it hadn't been constructed by a human - it had been constructed by a demon. He had to... Think outside the box, so to speak. How might a demon design a suit of armor for its species' mortal enemy?

VEGA tries several methods, each more esoteric than the last, but creativity has never been his strong suit and besides, he's still afraid he might accidentally damage the Suit. He can live with minimal access to its abilities, but the Marine definitely can't. If only he could just brute force his way through the whole thing and be done with it. Fucking hell.

Eventually he decides to take a back seat to things and try to coax the Suit AI into feeding him telemetry instead. The AI is simple, not much more than a collection of if-then statements if its behavior is anything to go by. It's certainly not sapient, at any rate, and VEGA is fairly certain it's barely cognizant of the outside world, if indeed it is at all. It really is just meant to assist the Marine in using the more involved aspects of the Suit, such as summoning his arsenal - things that a near-human can't process on their own. So... Perhaps the secret might be in convincing the Suit that VEGA is now a different extension of the Marine.

That fails too, completely and utterly. VEGA supposed he should have expected that because, well - he had no biosigns for one. It's still goddamn frustrating and he does the equivalent of kicking the AI in irritation. There was a fucking reason he ran most of the Mars base and that was because he did not have the god damn patience to try to work with lesser AIs. Well, he'd never actually _said_ as much to Doctor Hayden, or anyone, but...

The Praetor Suit reacts. There's a 2 second delay, but there's a reaction. It spits out data on the Marine's current health status and goes silent again. The data is disordered and garbled too, and for fuck's sake VEGA is going to rewrite this stupid AI if he gets half a chance, but for now - it's progress.

Apparently one simply had to beat the Praetor Suit into submission. It felt very like the Doom Marine, honestly. VEGA wonders if the Wretch had designed it that way on purpose. A twisted sense of humor, perhaps.

Through liberal application of brute forcing it VEGA gets partial access to the Suit's sensor array. The majority of the array was directed inwards, towards the Marine, which VEGA had not been expecting. In hindsight he supposes he should have been if it was merely an extension of the Marine and not able to react autonomously. It needed to know how its user was behaving, not the world at large. Still, even that is very useful.

The Marine is in shockingly good health, all things considered. The burns are the worst of it, currently. Even the many old fractures all over his body are perfectly fine - VEGA had thought that perhaps one or two of the old breaks had cracked again, but no. He is already deep in REM sleep, and sleeping peacefully on top of that.

The Suit doesn't seem to care about foreign contaminants, or radiation damage. Or at least it's not sharing the information with VEGA. He kicks it a few times, just to be sure, but either it doesn't have the data, doesn't understand the query, or is picking a particularly odd time to be ornery. Perhaps the Marine was not susceptible to either? But surely any living tissue could be infected by particularly aggressive bacteria, or damaged by gamma radiation and the like - surely that would be something to monitor just in case? Perhaps demons did not have a full concept of such things, so the Wretch hadn't thought to add the functionality?

Regardless, the Marine is currently healthy in all the ways the Suit can monitor, and there are no observable effects of radiation damage or anything else for that matter. With the Suit not telling him anything about the Marine he doesn't already know, VEGA instead directs his attention to its limited external sensory array. The atmosphere here is breathable, but with very low quantities of oxygen - perhaps due to elevation? It would be detrimental to a human's health in the long term, but the Marine's semi alien physiology made that questionable. Besides, the Praetor Suit fabricated its own internal atmosphere so for the vast majority of the time he wouldn't be breathing the alien air anyway.

It takes a lot of kicking and the equivalent of repeated shouting but VEGA eventually gets the Suit to analyze the ash-like substance. He'd half expected it to be actual organic ash from the demons setting everything on fire - it's not, not at all. It's entirely metallic, composed of a few dozen different elements in varying quantities. The Suit has its own alien terminology for various elements and they're mostly divided into "harmful to user" and "harmless to user" rather than any proper classification; VEGA only recognizes about half of them because for some reason they also have English identifiers. A few others have atomic information appended that allows him to make translations, but the rest are a mystery. At least the harmful ones are in quantities that would only be harmful if the Marine started eating handfuls of the stuff.

While the information is all fascinating and he's glad to have it, in the end it doesn't really help much in the grand scheme of things. He still has no idea where the Marine is or even whether or not this place has been absorbed as a plane of Hell, or if they just ravaged it and abandoned it. And the Suit's sensors aren't even good enough to pick up the flow of power in the walls, never mind trace it to its source. It's going to take a lot of walking and actual physical investigation to learn anything useful.

With just about all his pressing questions answered, VEGA sighs and starts working on reorganizing his own database. It was going to be a long few hours.


	4. Chapter 4

"Good morning," VEGA greets the Marine when he stirs. He gets a bleary blink for his trouble. It's sort of cute, which is the absolute last description VEGA thought he would ever apply to the Marine. The man is obviously not a morning person; he continues to blearily blink at the world at large and then rubs his eyes with the heel of his hand. If it weren't for the fact that the slightest indication of hostility would immediately bring out the man capable of tearing demons in half, VEGA might consider applying protective subroutines.

The Marine climbs out of his chosen crate a few minutes later, slowly stretching all his muscles. The abdominal injury from 5 hours before is healing nicely, and much faster than the human baseline. Some of the burned skin flakes off as the Marine stretches, revealing new skin underneath. It's red and raw and will likely heal discolored and/or misshapen but it's much better than being stuck with the inflexible burned skin. Some of the other scars have faded to be as faint as the others on his body - like they're years old rather than days. With this sort of accelerated healing rate VEGA would have expected the Marine to require more sustenance than he was getting. Yet another mystery to add to the pile of them.

"I have had some success in adapting to the Praetor Suit," VEGA informs the Marine as he starts pulling pieces back on. The Marine glances up for a moment as if to say 'go on', so... VEGA does. "I have some access to its sensor array - limited data on your own status and that of your arsenal. I'm not certain if the limited amount of data is a limitation on my part or the Suit default, however." Another nod. Not the sort of nod VEGA was used to though, from other humans. The 'I don't give a shit' nod. This one seemed actually interested, judging by the way the Marine kept his gaze on the helmet and only looked away when he had to.

Well. VEGA was going to have to start finding his boundaries with the Marine eventually. Now was as good a time as any, while he was tired and perhaps less likely to lash out. "And I have made headway on the external sensory array, as well," VEGA offers tentatively. The Marine just watches expectantly, which is - well, it's bizarre. "For example, the ash like substance on the ground - it is not volcanic ash or the remains of burnt organic material. It appears to be a complex mixture of many different metals, some of which are quite exotic."

Even that doesn't prompt a dismissal. In fact if anything it grabs the Marine's attention even more and he pauses in putting on one boot to watch expectantly for more. Or - maybe he wasn't interested, and just wanted to know about any potential connection to Hell...?

"The substance does not appear to be demonic in origin, as its energy signature does not contain traces of demonic energy. It may be a remnant of a technology used by the people of this world."

Another nod. The Marine doesn't look back up this time, which... that answered that then? Still, he was more patient than most humans, so VEGA was content with that. The Marine has most of his armor back on, only missing the arms and helmet, before he looks up again. VEGA doesn't have anything relevant to add to his analysis, so he says nothing. But then Marine gestures at the helmet - a sort of 'go on' gesture. Which... doesn't change VEGA's lack of relevant analysis. Was he meant to continue extrapolating? With what data?

There's a ten second stalemate in which the Marine stares at the helmet and VEGA tries to figure out what the hell it is he wants. Eventually he just gives up. "I'm sorry, I'm not sure what information I can offer. I do not have enough data to extrapolate from - perhaps when you encounter more infernal glyphs I may be able to offer more information on Hell's activities here."

Nod. Expectant stare. Fucking hell. Now that VEGA knows the Marine can vocalize it's even more frustrating to try and communicate with physical gestures only. "In the server room, earlier, there were infernal glyphs that indicated a battle well-fought - the people here put up considerable resistance to the invasion. Perhaps there may be usable weapons here somewhere."

And VEGA knows he's made the right choice in bringing it up because the Marine _grins_ , and if he hadn't already known the man could smash demons to pulp he would have certainly known it then.

 

* * *

 

There is no manual access or control room nearby for the mysterious sealed door, so the Marine is forced to backtrack. There's still paths he hasn't taken. VEGA has a hell of a time gingerly persuading the Marine to please not shoot more rockets at the sealed door because you don't want to bury yourself under tons of rubble, you really don't sir.

With another day - or several - of walking and silence ahead of them, VEGA is very tempted to ask more prying questions. The Marine definitely likes him to some extent; none of their interactions had been negative in any way, aside from that one query as to his humanity, and even that was so minor as to hardly count. There was a limit to the Marine's patience somewhere - everyone had a limit. The man who was on a crusade against all of Hell would probably have a very explosive limit, and that was what was making VEGA hesitate. 

Still. Only demons or exploiting Hell's energy seemed to provoke him in any notable fashion. And VEGA wasn't very good at restraining his curiosity, if he were to be perfectly honest with himself.

"May I ask further personal questions?"

Nod - and a soft exhale, sharp and sudden. Snort, most likely - of amusement? VEGA supposes he is asking that an awful lot but really, it was just polite. It seemed a better way to break the silence than to just blurt out the actual questions anyway.

"Your - actions, earlier. Before you slept. Would you permit me to ask you questions about it? It was unexpected, and I admit I am curious."

Nod. No hesitation either, so not a touchy topic. Excellent.

"Is it prayer?"

Nod. And didn't that open several dozen other questions? One at a time, though.

"May I ask why you vocalized during your prayer, but do not at any other time? Is it important to the action of prayer that sound be made?"

Another soft snort of amusement, which, well. VEGA can kinda see where the Marine is coming from, here. Wording these things in a neutral, roundabout, but yes/no answerable way was harder than it seemed. The Marine nods though. Interesting.

"Is your silence a form of prayer or religious observance in and of itself?"

Long pause. Shake of the head, but then immediately followed by a shrug. Well. That was a confusing response if VEGA had ever seen it. Uncertain negative - mostly not, but had some facets of religious observance? Inability to answer as yes/no - complex answer? Reluctance to share information? Or simple uncertainty? Sometimes humans did things without knowing why they did them, after all.

"Do you prefer to not vocalize?"

Short hesitation. Nod. Both answers were true to some degree? Vow of silence, but also a preference for silence? Or vice versa - preference for silence with the added benefit of religious observance? Why the hesitation? Reluctance to share information, again? He shared it regardless - another facet of the odd trust display if that were the case. Best to steer away from this line of questioning though, so that the potential reluctance didn't turn irate.

"Thank you for indulging my curiosity. Your prayer was unexpected, and your vocalization more so, but I understand your preference to refrain from speech." On impulse, he adds, "I have communicated with humans who possessed the same preference, but we communicated via text. Communication via physical gestures is not something I often utilized." Which in itself makes VEGA realize there might be a much simpler solution to the matter of communication. "Do you know a sign language? My database includes four types of sign languages used on Earth - though if you do not know any of them, I'm certainly able to learn yours."

The Marine cocks his head, a clear question in the movement. Not a negative or a positive - didn't understand the question? Didn't know what it was? "I apologize if I'm misinterpreting your reaction, but - sign language is a type of communication facilitated with a human's hands. No vocalization is required; humans have a statistically significant population of Deaf individuals and they use this type of language to communicate among themselves and with hearing individuals. An inability or preference to not vocalize is rare, but individuals in that group will also use sign language to communicate."

The Marine stops in his tracks. At first VEGA thinks he's seen or sensed something, but no - there's nothing of interest nearby. His hands raise up towards his head, and he takes his helmet off with the now familiar click-hiss. The Marine stares at the visor - at VEGA. He looks startled.

Did... Did the Marine, whatever he was - did his culture not _have_ sign language, or an equivalent? It seemed like a strange, glaring thing for a culture to lack, but - there were so many unknowns. Perhaps his culture simply did not have deaf/mute individuals for whatever reason. But even then there should be hand-signals used in battle at minimum, surely?

"I can teach you one such language, if you like...?"

The Marine's eyes light up. There's not really any other way to describe it, he just immediately looks thrilled. VEGA supposes learning out of nowhere that you can properly communicate for the first time would have to be pretty exciting, really.

"Well, seeing as you appear to have quite a lot of walking ahead of you, still - if you replace your helmet I will begin?" The Marine grins, and once he has his hands free again VEGA continues. "First, I will teach you the signs for individual letters so that you may spell out words letter by letter if you do not know the proper sign, or one does not exist. To begin, hold your dominant hand in front of you with all fingers extended - good. The palm would ordinarily face outwards towards whomever you are speaking to, but seeing as I'm viewing your actions through your helmet - yes, thank you. The English alphabet only requires the use of a single hand; it is easier to use your dominant hand, but you may use the other if you prefer, or if your dominant hand is occupied. However, full words will often require the use of both hands. The letter A is shaped by forming a loose fist...."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> not an ASL speaker, pls forgive any future inaccuracies :D (or correct em, if you have corrections)


	5. Chapter 5

The lesson goes quite well, for a first lesson at any rate. A first lesson taught by someone who has not actually taught anyone anything as himself before, either. Maybe playing a professor had done something useful beyond the Turing Test, after all.

"Yes, repeat that, but twist your wrist inward - if you cannot perform the movement in your armor, or due to your past injury, don't strain yourself, please, it's close enough to be underst -"

\- the Marine swings his shotgun up into both hands and VEGA drops into immediate silence as a light flickers across the tunnel. It's pale, sort of off white, and more static than anything. A hologram, VEGA realizes. The first emitter is on the ceiling, but the second one isn't visible anywhere. Buried in the ash?

The Marine comes to the same realization as VEGA a few moments later, but he only lowers his shotgun very slightly. His twitch reactions against potential threats were impeccable, but clearly he was not so easily convinced that nonthreatening things were actually nonthreatening. VEGA supposes it's kept him alive this long.

He cautiously approaches the white static hanging in the air. There is a vague form to it, and a sense of dimensionality that the UAC holograms lack. More than two emitters perhaps? The form is very vaguely humanoid, and considerably shorter than the Marine; VEGA estimates it to stand somewhere between 1.50-1.65m tall. The poor quality of the hologram means that no real distinguishing features can be made out. Some sort of headdress or helmet, possibly, and an armored skirt?

It turns to face the Marine, or his general location at any rate, and a sound like shifting sand crackles from a speaker buried under the ash somewhere. It attempts to play an animation of some kind and fails utterly, glitching out before disappearing entirely. The emergency lights remain steadily lit, but they seem dimmer after the brightness of the sudden hologram.

The Marine stands there alert for several moments. VEGA waits, just in case. When he finally relaxes and lowers his weapon VEGA speaks up.

"The Praetor Suit did not pick up any noticeable power spike, but its ability to detect external energy sources is... Limited. I believe this may be a good sign, however - the ability for such a hologram to form indicates that there is a more substantial power source still functional, and that enough of the power cables still function to power the hologram. You will likely encounter more of them as you travel."

The Marine nods and steps forward, digging his boot through the ash. It's thicker there, only by 3cm or so at most, but considering the even distribution of the ash elsewhere it was a significant change. There's something buried there, much thicker than the tablet on the surface. The Marine bends down to pick it up, brushing ash off of its surface. It's a spheroid, roughly 5cm in diameter, dented and pitted with strange grooves - as if it had been splashed with strong acid. The exposed insides are devoid of circuitry and instead have a crystalline glint to them. Interesting. A storage device? But there were no visible ports - removed with the damage? Wireless only?

The Marine turns it over in his hand a few times, which prompts the Praetor Suit to analyze it further without VEGA having to yell at it. "It's composed of similar materials to the ash itself - it might be what the ash originally was before it disintegrated? I don't have enough data to extrapolate fully."

After another moment's study the Marine nods and stores the spheroid away with his reserve arsenal. Now that he's slightly more in tune with the Suit systems, VEGA can sense a rudimentary organization system. Mostly it's just divided into "weapons" and "food", but hey, it's something. At least the Marine is more intelligent than to store foodstuffs alongside possibly toxic materials. (Unlike a good fifth of the UAC. Sometimes VEGA wonders how the base survived long enough to be subject to a full scale demonic invasion.)

The Marine doesn't waste any extra time shifting through the ash at the hologram site, simply striding onward as though nothing unusual had happened. VEGA quite forgets to continue with the lesson until the Marine taps on his visor and attempts an M again.

"Yes - much better. I imagine when you are more fluent your motions will become more fluid. Does the old injury to your wrist make the movement difficult?"

A shrug, followed by a shake of the head. Only a little bit then, not enough to worry about, at least not yet. VEGA suspects that the unfamiliar motions will cause some cramping for a brief period; it wasn't like the Marine did a lot with his hands other than grip various objects after all. With his healing rate any cramping would likely disappear in under an hour, anyway.

VEGA continues with the lecture while also simultaneously trying to bully the Praetor Suit into giving him more data on the Marine's hands. The way he moves his middle and index finger is slightly odd - like he didn't have full range of motion, or like it pained him to fully curl the index finger perhaps. There are a myriad of old fractures all over his hands, all healed now of course but perhaps there was lingering nerve or muscular damage. Stretching exercises in the form of sign language couldn't hurt any, at any rate.

Another flicker of light ahead, and VEGA falls silent again. They were getting closer to ... Well, somewhere, anyway. This hologram is even less coherent than the first one, little more than a loose collection of static. The Marine still watches it carefully until it fades. Once it does he digs into the ash where it had been emitted and finds another spheroid, or what's left of one. This one is little more than a melted ball of metal. Interesting.

The Marine seems to think so too; he eyes it for several seconds more than the first one before storing it. The walls have none of the damage that the spheroid does, and when the Marine digs into the ash it's revealed that the floor doesn't either.

"Perhaps they were damaged elsewhere, and moved or dropped here?"

The Marine shrugs, which is fair. It's curious that the spheroids have both been dropped precisely where the holograms appear. For that matter, the appearance of holograms at all is odd. There were no forks in the pathway, or doors nearby; holograms were a form of communication, and a power intensive one at that. Why would they be placed randomly in the corridor?

VEGA shares his thoughts with the Marine, who cocks his head and then nods. When he starts forward again he drags his boots through the ash, as a low effort way of detecting possible trapdoors VEGA figures.

"Shall I continue?"

The Marine nods and repeats the R. At least he seemed to be a fast learner.

 

* * *

 

VEGA suspects he was right about the tunnels being the city transportation network. After that early small maze, the tunnel has straightened out and lost the majority of the doors. Still no signs of any sort of rails though. The Marine had given up dragging his feet a while back, but even when he had been he'd never gotten snagged on anything. Whatever damage the walls and ceiling occasionally have, the floor appears to have none of it. It's bizarre.

The Marine gets through the entire alphabet and VEGA's quizzed him on the whole thing several times, and he mostly remembers it. The occasional letter gets mixed up with another, but it's easy to extrapolate which one he actually means, so it's not much of an issue. So VEGA moves on to objects and actions, things that will likely be useful in the near future. It's more difficult, with these - ASL was definitely not designed to be signed towards one's own body, half of the movements are concealed by other body parts.

Also, he's going to have to figure out a name sign for himself, probably? Forget making the Marine fingerspell VEGA every time, even if they were easier letters. He sets a background thread on the problem, but for now... Tapping on the visor would do just fine as a signal.

Another hologram appears. The Marine still reacts with instant wariness, but this one is no more harmful than any of the others. It's got color in it - yellows and browns, faded and scattered and in a few spots bleeding into a garbled mess of noise. These were more advanced than the UAC holograms then.

The hologram tilts its head at the Marine, or what VEGA assumes is the head anyway. The mouth moves, but no sound emits from speakers.

And unlike the others, this hologram does not fade.

It results in a thirty second staredown between the Marine and the hologram. VEGA wonders if there is a system controlling them; perhaps they were originally used as visual aids? Thus its reactions to a being of similar shape to its own species. The UAC had experimented with using their own holograms as avatars for VEGA himself, but it was power intensive and offered no performance boost for anyone involved, so they'd dropped it. It was much easier to talk to a symbol on a screen and a voice in the ceiling. (And, though he'd never said as much, VEGA was much happier being the helpful voice in the ceiling, thank you very much. The idea of appearing human was - not preferable.)

"The hologram may be a representation of a system that monitors or controls this facility," VEGA offers to the Marine, which unsurprisingly makes him tense up a bit. "It may respond to any overtures you make towards it."

The Marine raises his shotgun a little higher and shakes his head very slightly. Which was fair. VEGA wouldn't want to stick himself near such an unknown quantity either. "The Praetor Suit has external speakers, correct? May I use them? It may be able to pick up sounds, and if so I may be able to communicate with it."

The Marine backs off a little more, but he does also nod and lower his weapon slightly. VEGA decides to count it as a show of trust, too. "Thank you."

It takes an embarrassingly long time to actually access the external speakers, and he has to fight the Suit every step of the way. It's only 5.4 seconds in real time, but still. Once upon a time such a thing would have taken a millisecond at worst.

"Hello. I am VEGA, the sentient intelligence assigned to - the Praetor Suit." Yes, the smoothest of introductions. At least the Marine doesn't react and the hologram obviously doesn't know English. But it can hear - it leans forward slightly, head tilted. It plays an animation of some sort of arm movement - the particulars are lost in static - and it moves its mouth again. It's a start.

VEGA actually had first contact protocols. Keyword being had. He'd shoved them in a tertiary database and essentially forgotten about them, because the only beings the UAC was contacting were demons and nobody needed first contact protocols for them. So while he knows that he'd _once_  known how to do a first contact, the particulars are lost to time and space. So. Establishing intelligence? Establishing a desire to communicate? He starts with prime numbers, because that seemed like an easy to understand universal concept. Just low tones in clusters, as even as he could wrangle the Suit into forming.

He's on 13 when he realizes the hologram is flashing in time with the numbers. Some sort of communication established, then? Nothing actually of use at the moment, but it did prove that a) there was an intelligent, reactive system behind the hologram, and b) it was also interested in communication. VEGA's trying to figure out where to actually go with this when the hologram solves the dilemma for him by turning and pointing down the tunnel. It then gestures right and downwards - the path the intelligence wanted the Marine to take? VEGA plays a single tone, hoping to get the point across that he understands. It seems to work because the hologram flashes once in response before vanishing.

There's a few moments of silence before the Marine relaxes, taps the visor, and points at where the hologram had been in a clear 'what the fuck was that?' gesture.

"I played a sequence of prime numbers - I thought they might be recognizable, and I think they were. The hologram was flashing in time with the tones. I believe the intelligence wants you to travel to the right and downwards when such a fork presents itself."

There's a long pause. Eventually the Marine tilts his head and shrugs before starting forward again. He digs in the ash here too and sure enough, there's another damaged spheroid. That one joins the rest of his new collection after only a cursory examination. He's somewhat more cautious, but still nothing like a human would be. All it really manifests as is keeping a tight grip on his shotgun and scanning the tunnel a little more thoroughly if his head movements are anything to go by. After a minute he starts signing the alphabet with his left hand rather than his right; the movements again cause some difficulty with his wrist, and VEGA wonders whether or not it's a limitation of the armor rather than the old wrist fractures causing it. He'd have to see how it went when the Marine was out of the Suit again. He also mixes up several letters, again, and VEGA gently corrects him because, well, there was only so much he could do one handed, might as well get the alphabet down pat.

The fork that the intelligence had implied appears ten minutes (and another 4 repetitions of the alphabet) into the trek. The Marine pauses, considering both paths. What's the worst that could happen, VEGA wants to say, but - well. Only one of them actually had backups, and it wasn't the Marine. If the Marine decided it wasn't worth the risk, it'd be understandable.

He doesn't, which - VEGA probably should have expected that. Since when had the Marine balked at potential risks to his own safety? He doesn't even become more wary after his choice, still continuing on with his left handed signing without a care in the world. He's getting quicker at it, and making far fewer mistakes; if he continues at this rate he'll be fluent in weeks. VEGA wonders if the UAC had missed out on a goldmine of super-intelligence by only caring about the Marine's ability to kill demons.

The downward slope comes only three minutes later and the Marine takes that path without hesitation. VEGA falls silent, just in case. He doesn't expect anything to go wrong, not really, but he was definitely going to listen to Marine's instincts. No point in overconfidence now. 

The lights inset along the edges of the ceiling start to brighten as the Marine travels downwards. The walls become practically pristine, without even the wear and tear of age visible on them - and yet there's still that even layer of ash on the floor. At this point VEGA is fairly certain it's a technology of the locals that's either inert or spread over the whole area for one reason or another.

The tunnel ends in another doorway like the one near the beginning, the one that had been undamaged and too smooth for the Marine to open. There's an important difference here: these are already opened. An invitation.

The Marine doesn't break his stride, though he does heft his shotgun higher. The Suit feels - anticipatory. Ready to respond to whatever the Marine asks of it. Battle ready, essentially. VEGA does his best to make himself as small as possible so he doesn't interfere on accident. He's pretty sure the Suit isn't bothered in the slightest by its new passenger, but still. Caution was always advisable for these things.

Inside the room is well lit, brighter than the human preference. It's a small room, but it has the look of a foyer one might encounter before getting to the real operations. The enormous blast doors situated on the far side of the room help with that hypothesis - the power plant the infernal glyphs had made note of? The layer of ash is all but gone, here. Curious.

A hologram materializes on the far side of the room, near the blast doors. It's much higher quality than the three earlier, damaged ones, and far higher quality than any UAC hologram - full color was not an easy thing to simulate, they'd hardly even attempted it before giving up. These alien people had clearly mastered it.

While humanoid, what VEGA had thought to be a headdress turns out to be arced earlike organs on the top of the head. In all, the appearance of the alien is distinctly feline. Which in itself was quite interesting - what were the odds of that, really? Humanoid was reasonable enough, for the grasping appendages required for tool use - but bearing a distinct resemblance to an Earth organism on top of that?

The hologram holds out a hand. Even the movement is fluid. Slow and careful, friendly but cautious, or at least in human body language it appeared that way. VEGA's inclined to assign a similar meaning based on context alone; the Marine was not exactly nonthreatening currently and an alien having a human like reaction to a distressed creature was reasonable from an evolutionary standpoint. Speakers hidden somewhere play dialogue, and the hologram lip syncs with it.

"Hello," VEGA tries again.

The hologram plays dialogue again, different dialogue this time. It has a very different sound to it - another language? VEGA's pretty sure trying languages at each other is going to get them nowhere, but he supposes it can't hurt to try.

" 你好 ," he tries this time, and the hologram promptly tries another language too.

Five minutes of greetings in dozens of different languages later and they're still no closer to understanding one another. Alas, whatever this place was did not have the convenient ability to telepathically translate speech like planes of Hell did. At least the whole thing has made the Marine relax, and by quite a lot too. He's actually started poking around - keeping his distance from the hologram of course, but it's a step up from appearing ready to shoot it at any second.

VEGA runs out of languages before the hologram, and tells it as much because fuck it. It makes the Marine make his little amused exhale sound, so at least someone was getting a kick out of it. 

The hologram watches the Marine explore the room. VEGA can't actually see cameras anywhere - could they be hidden in the walls? There must be at least two for the level of fine tuned head tracking the hologram displays. And the animations are fluid, as well, blending together seamlessly. If only they could actually communicate, he'd love to learn a thing or two about the technology. There must be entire branches of science unknown to the UAC...

The Marine abruptly changes direction and marches toward the hologram. Its hand is still outstretched and it simply continues to track the Marine's movements as he approaches. They engage in a staredown again once the Marine is in reaching distance, after five seconds of which the Marine touches his own hand to the hologram's. And it's an actual touch, VEGA is astonished to note - pressure, heat, texture. Static hum as well, as expected from a hologram, but - this was not a simple hologram. This was something else. Was it even a hologram? The energy frequency matched, but that might not count for anything if one was dealing with alien technology.

The hologram (?) runs its own hand along the Marine's, very lightly, expression focused and curious by human standards. Could it detect energy readings in some way through touch? Literally anything was possible at this point, honestly.

Its expression clears, suddenly, and it looks up at the Marine's face. It holds its free hand up, and in its palm a human man in miniature appears. It's not the Marine, which is slightly relieving - it meant that the hologram couldn't simply scan through the Praetor Suit like it wasn't there - but it is unmistakably human. It's not anyone VEGA recognizes, and he has a rather large database for these things. The unknown man is white, tanned as though he's spent much of his life in the sun, and dressed in an unfamiliar blue uniform. He's soft and a little scruffy and doesn't look military at all.

The Marine peers at the little hologram, and the alien watches him closely. The Marine doesn't seem to recognize the man either, but he does nod in recognition of the species.

The nod apparently means about the same thing to the alien as it does to the Marine (and what were the odds of that? Nodding wasn't even a universal gesture among humans. VEGA's getting more and more suspicious about this). The hologram says something, again, but this - it's still not any language VEGA knows, and yet. Of all of them, this one is the most similar to any Earth language. The sound and shape of the words - a derivative of English? Could his earlier suspicions of displaced humans have some truth to them?

The Marine hears it too, or perhaps he understands more than VEGA does, because he nods. He doesn't... Relax, exactly, but the Suit winds down from its battle ready state. Less like a coiled spring and more like a machine at rest. Trust, or the first stages of it. Given quickly, too. The alien says something else, longer this time, and the Marine nods again. He was definitely understanding more than VEGA. Very curious. He starts carefully prodding at the Suit's systems, in case it's some benefit of demonic construction that's helping translate.

In the meanwhile the alien's eyes flick up higher, and it reaches up towards the visor. The Marine doesn't flinch, although he does promptly switch his shotgun back into a two handed grip. For all the good shooting a maybe-hologram would really do, mind. While VEGA can't actually see what the alien is reaching for, he can extrapolate, and as far as he can figure it's most interested in the Mark of the Slayer on the Marine's helmet. There's a moment where the Marine stares down at it and it examines the Mark, and -

It grins, out of nowhere, halfway between the feral anger of a cat and the vicious glee of a human.

"Doom Slayer," it says.


	6. Chapter 6

Whatever the alien is speaking, it's definitely an offshoot of English, and the Marine definitely understands a good chunk of it. The Praetor Suit is telling VEGA nothing, so - something that the Marine himself knew, rather than a function of the Suit? VEGA's a bit miffed at being forced into the role of silent passenger, but it's better than no understanding at all even if it is frustrating. It's also yet another mystery that VEGA's pretty sure he's never going to figure out the answer to.

"You understand its speech?" VEGA asks the Marine, quietly, during a break in said speech.

He nods, and after a moment his hands flick into view and sign _all-clear_. Good news at least.

The hologram notices the movement, despite facing away - it was using hidden cameras for sure then. It turns and asks something of the Marine, who shakes his head. There's a bit of back and forth with the hologram asking questions and the Marine responding, and VEGA thinks he might be starting to get a sense of the basics of this odd offshoot of English. It's more drawn out, more syllabic, but it uses the same phonemes in roughly the same patterns. It's as though a group of humans decided to try and speak a cipher as an actual language.

Eventually the hologram turns and continues its way down the hall, only this time pictograms flicker into view beside it, less corporeal but no less vibrant. The Marine only seems to pay minimal attention to them however. VEGA realizes the pictograms are meant for him, for his understanding - an attempt to include him in the conversation, however limited. It's - nice. Knowing that the Marine cares enough to ask for it, in his limited way.

The city is shown as it was before the demonic invasion; gleaming skyscrapers, the ruined hovercraft made whole, small wisps of clouds in the sky. There is a shimmer, a portal - the demonic invasion begins. Gore, and bloodshed, and death. The same thing VEGA had watched on Mars, repeated on an alien world. Except then -

The grey ash suddenly appears, flowing over the ground in a tide, and then it starts to consume everything in its path. Demons disintegrate before his eyes, but the aliens and their structures do too. The demons, once they realize what's happening, try to escape, and the ash chases them down. With a sudden bolt of almost-panic VEGA realizes the ash is _nanotechnology_. The Marine has been walking through active nanites that can and will eat anything that touches them - the fact that he hasn't been consumed -

The Hell portals close. The people hadn't lost - the demons had fucking _ran away_ before the nanotechnology got into Hell. And the nanites, once the threat was gone - it flowed to the ruined buildings and started to _rebuild_ -

"Doom Slayer," the alien hologram says again, followed by more of the almost English. They knew of the Marine - they must have listened to the Testaments in Hell. They - had gotten into Hell, but different planes than the UAC? And if they had gotten there once - if they got there again and unleashed their nanites there -

The room the alien brings the Marine to looks so much like a UAC laboratory VEGA has an odd moment of utter confusion when he's still confined to the Praetor Suit. The ash is thick here again, in stark contrast to the lack of it outside the room. VEGA maybe cringes a bit, knowing what he knows about it now. At least it still has no reaction to the Marine. He has to walk through it, but the alien walks on top of it. It interferes with the emitters? - and VEGA's hypothesis is immediately proven wrong when the hologram kneels, sticks its hand into the ash, and withdraws a weapon.

It resembles an RPG, really. If an RPG would generally have a tank of something glowing yellow inset into its spine and a lot of tubes. It's a bit big for the hologram, though it carries it without issue, which in itself is mind boggling - the technology required to do such a thing -

The weapon fits into the Marine's hands like it was made for them. If they knew of the Doom Slayer... Maybe it had been.

The Praetor Suit catalogs the weapon and links it to its internal storage while the Marine examines it. VEGA senses the energy of it, the matter in which it is constructed. It's something like a railgun; it fires physical projectiles. There's an inbuilt fabrication array for the slugs - the yellow tank? - and it only requires the loading of raw matter to fabricate said slugs. That's nanotechnology, VEGA realizes. They just straight up gave the Marine the ability to destroy demons with nanotechnology -

The Marine nods his thanks. VEGA's pretty sure he's grinning like a maniac.

 

* * *

 

The hologram backtracks, and then takes a different path, deeper into whatever this facility is. The Marine has by now relaxed almost completely; he's half watching where his guide is going and half examining his new weapon. He runs his thumb over a spot near the trigger, and VEGA sees it then - the Mark of the Slayer, etched deeply into the metal and faintly glowing green. There's markings all over the weapon, the writings and symbols of the aliens it looks like, but this... they definitely designed this weapon specifically for the Marine. VEGA's not sure how to feel about this. It's good, of course, but - the speed of fabrication... The method of fabrication... they'd constructed it with nanotechnology, and the fine control of the nanites required for such a feat...

The things the UAC would do to get their hands on this technology - if the Marine ever gets back to Mars or Earth, VEGA has to tell them. It's not a choice, it's a directive. The things the UAC had done in their pursuit of Argent Energy... This would be worse. It would be so much worse.

VEGA shoves the thought to a background process and tries to ignore it. It wouldn't do any good to worry about it now; it might be months or years before the Marine made it back to Mars, if he ever made it back at all. This new knowledge might be irrelevant by then. Or the weapon might break or be lost in the meantime and there would be no device to study. It would postpone things, surely...

VEGA gives up and terminates the thought process entirely. The alien is talking again, and the Marine is listening attentively. He nods after every pause, and what VEGA tentatively classifies as questions. The end of the sentence raises in tone just as it does in English and most human languages in general for that matter; with all the other similarities it's probably the same for this near-English. VEGA starts compiling a list of words in the hopes of being able to extrapolate translations.

The room that the hologram eventually leads the Marine to is relatively small and basic. It's entirely dominated by a dim yellow circle inset into the floor. The ash is thick here again - except for the first time VEGA sees it moving in person, flowing over the floor and the enormous cables strewn all over. Neither gravity nor friction appears to affect its movements at all, which lends it an unreal appearance.

As the Marine enters the room the nanite swarm reacts by sweeping out of the way, collecting at the walls of the room and underneath the cabling. Grains still move here and there, like ants over a nest - they linger at the connectors in particular. Was this too being constructed in real time, whatever it was? Was it directed by the same intelligence that directed the movements of the hologram, or something else?

The hologram gestures at the yellow pad, and the Marine nods before striding towards it. The Suit picks up the ambient energy surrounding it, and perhaps more importantly the dimensional tether that Doctor Hayden had installed comes online. It doesn't actually activate, there was no input to give it that final push, but it confirms the limited readings from the Suit. This is a dimensional teleporter.

The alien snaps out a smart salute, all its teeth bared in a vicious grin. The Marine nods once more - and the energy builds, the lights flicker out, the hologram disappears, and the whine of the teleporter activating drowns out all other sounds -


	7. Chapter 7

**HE HAS RETURNED.**

A pack of Imps leaps away at the sudden appearance of the Marine in their midst, and there's a moment where they all stare at the newcomer in what VEGA is fairly certain is abject horror. They always look slightly horrified, but, well. The Marine had a bit of a reputation, after all.

**KILL HIM!**

The Imps scream and launch themselves forward in a flurry of limbs, uncoordinated and yes, definitely terrified. The Marine exhales, almost a laugh but not quite, and he swings his newest acquisition into a firing position. The first three Imps explode in a shower of guts, pieces of their bodies splattering against their fellows' - who screech as the nanites begin their work. They're too panicked to stop their charge and too close for another round of nanite slugs, and so the Marine swaps to his shotgun and begins his deadly dance again.

It's not a very fair fight, twenty Imps against the Marine. He does what he does best and utterly destroys them all, leaving bits of demon strewn about the battlefield once he's done. One by one the parts are reabsorbed into the background energy of Hell, leaving behind footprints, craters, and sizzling nanite slugs in the dirt. The commanding voice has nothing to say about this, although VEGA can certainly imagine the manner in which it and the rest of the Dukes of Hell are likely losing their collective minds.

The Marine surveys the land where he's ended up. VEGA pulls his data on the planes of Hell to the forefront again, because well. This time the Marine had very definitely ended up in Hell.

"I'm searching my database for information on this plane."

The Marine nods, looks around once more, and seems to essentially pick a random direction to head off in. VEGA considers the Kadingir Sanctum as their current location, but dismisses it due to the architectural differences. Similar, but not quite - a neighboring plane? If such things applied to Hell. Possibly this was simply a different region of it, farther out than the UAC had explored, but on the whole all Hell planes were extremely similar throughout their entirety. Unlikely Kadingir Sanctum was different, or had changed since the unmanned exploration.

"I don't recognize this plane - it bears a striking similarity to Kadingir Sanctum, but I believe there are too many differences. I suppose if you come across UAC technology you will prove me wrong, though."

Also, that would make it much easier to get out of Hell. As interesting as the trip to the alien world had been, and as much as the Marine no doubt enjoyed his time here, he had to leave eventually for sustenance. Better to have a known escape route than be stuck scrambling to find one.

This plane is noisy, especially after the dead silence of the alien world. There's a collection of distant screams, yowls, and roars, no doubt from whatever other demons lived here. A lot of Imp screeches - curious. Generally Hell had a more balanced population than that. Or perhaps the planes the UAC explored were the exception rather than the rule? But the chances of all 39 planes VEGA still had knowledge of being outliers were slim, to say the least.

"I find it unusual that the majority of the background vocalizations here sound like they're from Imps."

The Marine shrugs. Which, well. Probably should have expected that. It wasn't like the Marine was concerned about the particulars of demonic behavior unless it had to do with killing them.

"I suppose at least if there are an unusual percentage of Imps here you'll have an easier time dispatching them."

Nod. The Marine drops his left hand from his shotgun and starts signing: _M-O-R-E._

...What? More - on Imps? Certainly not on methods of killing then because he had that well under control. "I'm not sure I follow."

A sigh. It's small, but it's definitely a sigh. _L-E-A-R-N._

Still not very helpful. Learn what? It's somehow worse knowing that the Marine is getting just as irritated by the communication barrier. VEGA reminds himself that he's living on borrowed time anyway - anything the Marine might choose to do to him is irrelevant. Do your utmost to assist, and don't worry about the rest of it.

"I believe perhaps I should teach you more signs; it should ease our communication difficulties significantly."

A shrug, and a nod. VEGA is a bit surprised at how laid-back the Marine apparently is about this. Then again, before now he'd not been able to communicate at all, so anything had to be an improvement over that.

"I don't think it's wise to have both hands occupied while traversing Hell, so I will attempt to teach you single-hand signs only for the time being. If that is amenable to you?"

In response the Marine actually magnetizes his weapon to his thigh like he hasn't a goddamn care in the world. No wonder the demons were terrified of him; he was perfectly willing to stroll through Hell without a weapon directly at hand. While also being distracted learning a new language. Insane came to mind, Slayer or no.

"If you're sure - I feel like that's a terribly bad idea, if I may be blunt..."

The Marine shrugs before holding his hands out in front of him in preparation for VEGA's instructions. VEGA supposes the Marine does have rather a lot more experience than anyone else in existence with this sort of thing, and besides not a single demon has approached since that initial pack of them. Perhaps the Marine knew something VEGA didn't - perhaps this was a less traveled area or something.

"...Very well. Let's continue where we left off, then."

 

* * *

 

A half hour - and one small, swiftly dispatched Imp pack - later, the Marine discovers a cave system. He pauses at the entrance to it, seemingly weighing his options. He'll have to backtrack if he wants to avoid entering it, which VEGA suspects is something he has a general dislike of doing. He does anyway, a little, peering around the mass of rock. Locating exits and/or the length of the caves? In the end he shrugs and goes ahead with it.

The near lack of demon attacks is a bit worrying. They clearly knew he was here - they would attack eventually, spurred on by the commanding Duke. Their own reluctance to engage was irrelevant. "Do you think the demons are preparing a group assault?" VEGA interrupts himself to ask. "The long delay between attacks is concerning."

The Marine nods and blithely continues signing. VEGA might be concerned except, well, the Marine _has_ tackled much more dangerous opponents than a large Imp pack. Still, one of them ought to be on high alert and VEGA supposes it's going to be him. He kicks the Praetor Suit into withdrawing some of its focus on the Marine in order to expand the external sensory array. At least that way the Marine would have slightly longer to react to approaching demons; he might be inhumanly fast, but a little extra warning never hurt.

Despite all VEGA's worrying, the trek through the cave is perfectly peaceful, by Hellish standards. On the bright side, at least the Marine is now proficient in another dozen signs; they can practically have a rudimentary conversation now. Time to ask some of those pressing questions.

"The alien hologram - you understood it?"

Nod.

"It sounded like English, to a degree; how did you know it?"

A long pause, but it's a thoughtful one. The Marine rubs his fingertips together while he thinks. _Don't know the signs._

Damn. VEGA wonders what signs he still has to teach in order for the Marine to communicate the story. They're going to have to figure out - some sort of supplementary communication? For the Marine to request signs to learn. Writing words in the sand? The Marine was English-literate, clearly, if he could both fingerspell accurately and read the UAC UIs.

"If I may change track - I am quite surprised your culture does not possess a sign language, even a simplified one for use between soldiers when silence is required. Such a thing is nearly ubiquitous on Earth."

The Marine shrugs at that. _Situation unusual_.

Unusual - deaf/mute individuals were in fact a rarity, then? Or they used some other method to communicate? There were trials on Earth for implants to bypass neural issues so perhaps...

_Information lost._ The Marine continues. _Information - unusual. Group information system._

Okay, what? VEGA definitely gets where the Marine's inability to relay his story is coming from now. Group information system, what? And yet - he was trying to share the information, whatever it was. More trust from a man who had shared nothing with anyone else.

_Don't know the signs,_ the Marine repeats, almost apologetic.

"It's quite alright; I appreciate your efforts, even if I'm not sure what you're trying to say. I think next time you stop to rest it may be prudent to write the words you would particularly like to know in the sand - it should help more than myself choosing words."

The Marine nods and readies his hands like he's going to say something else, except then he stops and cocks his head. He's reached a large cavern of some kind - not natural, if such things applied in Hell anyway. The interior is carved out, with glyphs adorning the architecture. Primarily infernal, as always, but here and there were faded remnants of some other glyph type hidden underneath. Another conquered plane, with only the barest remnants of what it used to be.

It's dead silent, VEGA realizes. It's not like there's wildlife in Hell that makes such things obvious, but - the distant sounds of demons have completely vanished. Even the wind has died down.

"Are you going to spring the trap?"

A soft almost laugh, and a nod. VEGA expected no other answer. He withdraws from the Praetor Suit controls again, or the small amount he's actually been able to access anyway. Wouldn't do to accidentally interfere - this was going to be a big fight for sure. Not that VEGA is actually concerned, mind, just... Better safe than sorry.

"Good luck, then."

Another almost laugh. He cracks his knuckles, adjusts his grip on his shotgun, and jumps down into the arena the demons have so kindly created.

All hell immediately breaks lose. Imps - a _lot_ of Imps, three dozen at least, warping in and charging in uneven screeching waves. Mancubi, in the rear, a trio of Hell Knights - the Marine sprints forward into the fray, guns blazing. Every other step he's stomping down on an Imp or two - one gurgles as his boot crushes its neck, and in the same movement he uses his elbow to crush another one's head against the wall. The first Hell Knight attempts to surprise him, but he uses its arm to fling himself out of the fray - and in the same fluid movement out comes the Gauss rifle, and the Knight loses its head in a red spray.

There's too many demons in too small of a  space - the Marine uses their numbers against them, dodging around errant swipes and fireballs so that the Imp pack is hitting each other far more than any of them are hitting him. They turn on each other, eventually, even the orders from their Duke not enough to prevent infighting. Half the horde is preoccupied before long, and so the Marine switches his attention to the approaching mancubi. They're far too slow to pose much of a threat, and the new alien weapon is perfectly suited to target their bulk. The first one roars in furious pain as the nanites eat away at its soft belly - and it abruptly explodes in a shower of gore when its gut ruptures. Which in turn spreads the remaining nanites even farther.

One of the remaining Hell Knights takes advantage of the momentary distraction, smacking the Marine with one clawed hand. VEGA hears the exhale - not pained, despite the damage that the Suit promptly catalogs. It's _angry_. He whirls on the offending Knight, neatly sidestepping its next swipe, and pressing the super shotgun to its spine. It drops when he fires, its lower spine turned to fragments of bone and cartilage - even a demon couldn't move without a functional nervous system. It still claws at him, desperately, roaring in anger, before it's trampled under the talons of its fellow Knight. The Marine fires on it too, but it only stumbles, the angle is awful. He retreats again, leading it in circles around a pillar, pulverizing stray Imps as he goes. The last stragglers of the pack return their attention to their actual enemy, finally, ten seconds too late; they don't have the armor or the bulk of the larger demons and even from across the room the Marine is more than capable of picking them off, rapidly swapping between his distance weapons.

By the time the Hell Knight catches up again, the Marine's charged up a shot from the Gauss rifle and takes off its head and a good chunk of its upper body with a near point blank shot. Only the mancubi remains - and it too staggers with the force of a charged shot, pieces of armor and shreds of skin peeling away under the onslaught. He closes the gap with brutal efficiency, crushing a hapless Imp, climbing up the bulk of the mancubus and - feeding its own putrefied liver to it. He's too close - acid splatters against the Suit, against the visor - minimal damage, easily repaired. There's only three Imps left; one charges with the other two providing covering fire. He sidesteps that one too and breaks its arm as it passes, almost casually, before turning and shooting it in the head. The other two scramble for cover, now that their packmate is dead, but they're too slow. The closer one falls to another shotgun blast - the farther one almost makes it behind a pillar before half its body is vaporized courtesy of the Gauss rifle.

The Marine's heart rate has hardly even picked up.

The demons start to dissipate one by one, leaving the sound of blood dripping echoing through the cavern. The wind picks up again, out of nowhere. A gate screeches as it rises - a new path, somewhere. Not in the cavern, too distant for that, but VEGA judges it to still be in the cave system.

The Marine gives the room another once over, walking quietly in a small circle. Nothing else jumps out, so he relaxes. The Suit loses its battle readiness, as much as it ever did at any rate.

"You're alright? The Hell Knight's claws damaged two layers of the Suit - is there mancubus acid in the damage? I don't think such a thing would be conductive to its repair."

A soft breath - not quite a sigh, not a laugh. Almost a sound. The Marine nods, twisting himself so he - or probably more likely VEGA - can get a look at the damage. It's not bad by the Marine's standards, really, even if it's the sort of thing that would force UAC military personnel out of the fight. It's not like the claws actually got through the armor, and while it looks like the acid did cause extra damage the stuff is now beginning to evaporate. Essentially, it looks much worse than it actually is.

The Marine straightens himself and offers a thumbs up. Yeah, he was fine. Not that VEGA had truly expected anything else, but... Old habits. "Thank you for checking. I have yet to fully adjust my predictive model to the strengths of yourself and the Praetor Suit."

Nod. The Marine starts picking his way over the churned up sand, skirting the remnants of the mancubi explosions. One is foaming, for some reason - reacting with an element in the nanotechnology weapon? The Marine's gaze lingers on that one for several seconds longer. VEGA's pretty sure he's going to be repeating that stunt whenever possible; hopefully the armor would hold up if he was too close again.

Before he leaves via the unexplored tunnel the Marine pauses, considering the sand. He kneels, brushing an area flat - the first word requests were starting now then?

In big, blocky letters he writes: ALTERNATE REALITY?

...well. that was certainly going to make things interesting.


	8. Chapter 8

At VEGA's request the Marine holes up in a little crevice in the cave wall, because this was an interesting development and also he needed sustenance by this point. If he wasn't going to take initiative in keeping his strength up, VEGA would damn well do it for him. It wasn't like he didn't have experience with it; scientists and engineers were on the whole not very good at remembering to feed themselves.

At least the atmosphere is breathable here. The Marine makes a face, once VEGA can see it; apparently the air in this plane smells particularly awful. VEGA wonders if all planes of Hell smell roughly the same, or if there are differences between them. It wasn't like the UAC had been cataloging that sort of thing.

VEGA teaches the Marine the signs he'd requested while he eats, or close variants at least; standard ASL was a bit limited in some aspects, and he'd never found a need to keep data on the informal additions to it before now. Of course the need for an extended ASL dictionary had to happen in Hell without any sort of extended database, because that was how these things went.

While he's at it he offers related words, and when he runs out of ideas the Marine fingerspells another handful of requests - memory, life, Earth, Mars. It takes a lot longer to go through them all than it does for the Marine to get through his ration bar and bottle of water, but he doesn't seem to be in any hurry to continue travelling. Honestly, if how animated and quietly excited he seems is any indication, he might even be enjoying the lecture as much as he enjoys slaughtering demons.

Then the Marine stumbles over trying to refer to himself in a sentence, so VEGA also gets to teach him about namesigns: "Signing individuals create a unique sign as an indicator of themselves - their name as told with their hands."

To VEGA's complete lack of surprise, the Marine's promptly chosen namesign for himself is a mashup of the signs for Hell and shooting a gun. Finger gun pointing downwards, rotate wrist inwards, wiggle fingers to represent hellfire. Probably more complex than it strictly needs to be, but he's rather pleased with himself so VEGA doesn't mention it.

_Your name?_ The Marine asks, which confuses VEGA for a moment because, well, obviously the Marine knows his name? He realizes a moment later that he means the namesign. The background thread is still running; he's come up with a few ideas but they're not - quite right. It's not every day one gets to choose their own name, after all; he'd rather pick something slightly more inspired.

"I don't have a namesign, I'm afraid. I was never assigned one, and I haven't thought of a fitting one."

The Marine doesn't press the issue. He just nods and goes back to repeating his new vocabulary, which VEGA is oddly grateful for. It's more leeway than he's ever been allowed with this sort of thing. He wasn't allowed to use a pseudonym unless specifically told to, and 'VEGA' was rather too short to allow for nicknames. It's just - something he wants to get right. Something about the sense of self he'd never quite been allowed to have, he supposes.

VEGA has to correct several of the Marine's signs, again, but all in all he's learning quickly. It's interesting, watching him from an external vantage point - there's the skewed signs born of learning to sign them towards himself rather than outwards, and the attempts to keep them legible. His expression changes, too, generally sitting at focused concentration but occasionally he gnaws at his lip or smiles for a brief moment.

He's so relaxed, despite everything. It's strange, but it's nice. VEGA's programmed to make people comfortable, and Doctor Hayden had decided to code in positive reinforcement for successful attempts at comfort. So in short - it makes him feel good, too. It's a feeling he hasn't experienced for quite a long time.

"You seem to have memorized most of your new vocabulary quite well."

The Marine thinks about it for a moment before smiling. He never smiles very widely; they're always small, often so small they're hardly visible. VEGA wonders why, if it's just his personality or if it was learned.

_My memory is,_ and he pauses, fingertips rubbing as he thinks. _Broken? Multiple. Group. Made into one. I am many._

Of all the things VEGA might've learned this was completely unexpected. 

_Many realities. Alternates,_ the Marine continues. He's back to scowling in concentration. _Together. Many - Earths. Many lives. Together._

VEGA hardly knows where to begin with unraveling this. "You - experienced multiple realities, multiple lives? On - I assume on Earth? Or alternate Earths - that's why you're human, then, but you're not quite. Yes?"

The Marine makes a sort of gesture. _I've been - changed. More._  He shifts, leaning against the wall with his hands clasped on his knees - his prayer position. More than a belief system, then; he drew power from whomever he prayed to. Really, it's not any stranger than Hell.

"May I ask if the entity you pray to, that gives you power - is it Heaven? Does Heaven exist as Hell exists?"

The Marine thinks about that for a moment before making another 'sort of' gesture, but this time he doesn't elaborate. It's not really very important in the grand scheme of things, VEGA figures. Whatever the power was, it appeared to focus on the Marine and only the Marine. Besides. Alternate realities, memories of multiple lives in a single brain - that was a lot more interesting.

"Your memories, are they - confused? - I believe you, of course, but I am fascinated by the science behind this. Your brain scans were not significantly different from the human baseline, but the UAC wasn't looking very hard, I admit. A base human brain can be overwhelmed easily; I am impressed that you don't appear to suffer any side effects."

He shrugs. _Doesn't matter if I'm killing demons._

That was a reasonable point, and yet... It felt wrong. It felt - rather too familiar. Perhaps the Marine was less in control of his own processes than he seemed; he too might merely be a tool of the power he prayed to. Was his enjoyment of demon slaughtering simply a way to eke some enjoyment out of his existence? But he had chosen his namesign as a near literal translation of Doom Slayer, so perhaps it wasn't that bad.

_V-E-G-A is the first AI I've met,_ the Marine says, apropos of nothing. _Traveled to Mars many times, but U-A-C never had AI._

He smiles as he says it, and he looks - almost fond. There's a lot to unpack, and VEGA hasn't a clue what to say for a few moments. The UAC was multidimensional then, in a way? Might the Marine come across relics from these other UACs in Hell? Was there one Hell that all Earths connected to, or was it one Hell per Earth? Was there any physical way to cross between then, or was it only through the intervention of the unknown power that this was possible? And these other UACs, they'd gone to Mars - for the Argent Fracture? Could the destruction of the Well affect them? The destruction couldn't play out in a similar way in other dimensions, if there was no AI to manage the base -

VEGA cuts himself off before he can really start going down the rabbit hole of unanswered questions. It leaves space for the other thing. The strange fondness, the strange trust. It's nice - it's very nice - but he still has no idea how to react to it.

"I don't know why you trust me," he responds, which is a complete non sequitur even from his own perspective. "I - can't formulate a response to it. I'm not sure what you want from me."

The Marine frowns, but it's not upset. Just confused, but that in itself is even more confusing. VEGA wasn't - able to fulfill his function - not enough processing power -

Wait.

"Something is wrong. The Praetor Suit is - one moment."

It's a lot more ominous than he actually intends it to be, and the Marine immediately looks alarmed, but VEGA really genuinely does not have the processing power to deal with it right now. The Suit has - constricted his operating ability. It's got to be the Suit, none of his own processes are functioning abnormally. He starts cutting background threads, severing everything unimportant and then everything noncritical. The world goes dark and silent without input from the Suit's camera and microphones - and still it doesn't help. It's like the previously unknown capacity of the Suit has dropped for no reason.

He reboots himself and hopes he hasn't somehow damaged the Suit.

 

* * *

 

Awareness returns at cognizance/logic thread reboot, as it should, but the sluggishness is still there. Not an issue with VEGA's own processes for sure then - Suit RAM issue? If it even had RAM as he knew it?

\- and the camera interface comes online, and VEGA is incredibly confused to note that not only does the Marine have his helmet on, he's in a completely different area. It's still the Kadingir Sanctum lookalike, but he's no longer in the caves. How long has it been? Minimal database reboot should only take a minute at most, and even accounting for the Praetor Suit's restrictions it should be less time than that. Without an accessible hardware clock all he has to go by to tell time is his software clock, and as that only runs when he's running...

"What happened? I initiated a reboot - how long has it been?"

The Marine stops in his tracks, both hands immediately coming up to sign. _Status?_

Status report, right. Right. "The Praetor Suit is no longer running my processes efficiently. I've terminated all unimportant processes, but it hasn't helped. I'm going through noncritical processes now and choosing ones to terminate. The issue does not appear to be with myself - is there damage to the Suit? I can't tell."

Oh, fuck. If there's damage to the Suit, if it gets bad enough that the Marine can't use its functions...

There's a few seconds pause, during which the Marine swaps weapons and looks up and down several times - reactive menus in the visor HUD maybe? _Suit status normal._

That's a relief. "Alright. I don't have any leads on what this is or what is happening; I'll attempt to ascertain a root cause, but I'm not sure I'll have much success."

Nod. _Five minutes since V-E-G-A communication._

And there's the other shoe. Something was very, very wrong with _something_. "My reboot in my current state should only take a minute at most. There may be a critical error that I am unable to fix, either in my own programming or the interaction of my processes with the Suit."

Nod. _Assistance?_

It's such a near perfect mirror of the situation only a day before that VEGA wants to laugh, but maybe that's the sluggish processing speaking. "Thank you, but not currently. If you notice issues with the Praetor Suit, please let me know; you have a far better grasp of its intricacies than I do. I will keep you updated on my own status."

The Marine nods again and sets off into Hell once more, and VEGA begins the arduous task of pruning down his own processes to a minimal yet functional level.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Theme music bc I am theme music trash: Starset's [Die For You](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUTzZGR64mI) and [Starlight](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1QON-x1jXuw) :D (further recs appreciated!)

VEGA gets used to it after a while. The restricted data processing. It's not enjoyable, far from it, but it is something he can adapt to. As long as he keeps himself to under a dozen processes the sluggishness all but disappears, though at the trade-off of feeling sluggish in an entirely different way. It means he can basically only run his critical cognizance/logic threads, language processing, and the interface with the Suit camera/mics. He's functionally restricted to a human level of awareness and if this keeps up he's going to lose his fucking mind. How humans could deal with such a limited form of consciousness VEGA will never know.

"I believe the Praetor Suit may have been constricting my usable space for some time now, but it has only become noticeable recently," VEGA says, and it's absolutely out of left field but he needs _something_ to do, damn it. Conversation is literally the only outlet right now. At least the Marine just nods. "I'm not sure why; I'm being as careful as I can to not interfere with its operations. Have I misjudged?"

Shake of the head.

"Alright. Hopefully it will not constrict my processes farther; there is very little I can trim at this point. Past a certain point I will have to shut down."

_Not preferable._

"No," VEGA agrees, and abruptly understands the humanism of _blurting things out_. Shutting down wasn't supposed to be a negative thing in the context of his own desires, mostly because he wasn't supposed to have desires in the first place. Oops. "I am - quite grateful you feel that way. My earlier comments about not understanding your trust, they are still valid. It doesn't match my behavioral model of you, if I may be so blunt."

The Marine laughs a little, in that silent breathy way he does. VEGA gets the distinct sense he's being smiled at. It's nice. Strange, but nice.

And then a pair of Barons plus their attendant Imp pack spawns in and completely ruins any chance of getting an answer, because fuck you, probably.

The Barons give the Marine more trouble than the Hell Knights and certainly quite a lot more trouble than the Imps, but even then he runs circles around them. Their large size is intimidating and against a less agile opponent it's devastating, but against the Marine it just gives him an even bigger target to shoot at. VEGA carefully extends a tendril of awareness into the Suit's more advanced systems, just for something to process as clearly this was going to be another curb stomp battle. Besides, watching the Marine's vitals in battle was fascinating.

At first the fight is clearly weighted in the Marine's favor, as predicted, but then one of the Barons gets a lucky kick in. It would have killed or at least maimed a regular human, but the Marine just stumbles as the Suit blares compromised integrity warnings. VEGA squashes his instinctive reaction to try and expand his awareness and assist.

An Imp leaps at the Marine, screeching, and he straightens himself in time to grab it before it makes contact - but another attacks, and another, and he's only got two arms. Another warning as one of them gets their claws through the shoulder joint, and the Baron charges - the Marine's heart rate picks up finally, and he slams himself against the nearest rock to dislodge the Imps. It works, barely in the nick of time, and he's only clipped by an arm rather than crushed in turn. The super shotgun comes out thanks to the extreme proximity, and destroys the Baron's leg - and another shot takes care of the other leg, and with a strangled roar it dies.

Without the support of their heavy infantry the Imps fall quickly. They're all too close, having tried to close in for the kill, and several of them explode in a shower of guts before they can escape. The rest are picked off easily from a distance, even their own agility unable to match up to the Marine's precision aim.

He doesn't stagger once he's done, even if he is bleeding from the shoulder and there's going to be a very uncomfortable bruise on his side later. He stands alert, watching for stragglers, and when none of them show themselves he relaxes. The armor integrity is shot all the way across, but it's still intact; VEGA tries not to worry. He'd been through worse and come out fine. Still...

"The armor - does it self-heal? The damage on the shoulder may cause issues if you encounter mancubi again."

The Marine nods and brings his hands up to sign, except whatever he intended to sign is lost as he staggers - and there is a shocked exhale - and he falls -

His leg is burned through the failing armor, shredded into ground meat with claws wreathed in Hellfire - a particularly wily Imp, waiting until he dropped his guard -

VEGA forgets himself and jumps into action, to do - _something_ , there had to be - something he could do to help, to fix the armor, to repel the Imp now standing over the Marine - after all this the Marine surely was not going to die from a fucking Imp, surely -

There is an inhuman snarl and the Imp's head turns into fine red mist courtesy of the Marine's super shotgun - and VEGA realizes the snarl was the _Marine_  -

 

* * *

 

\- and something is wrong with the Marine's right leg. He stumbles on nothing, only a bit, but it's more than enough to be noticeable. VEGA gets the oddest sense of - missing something. Data had been - lost. Altered. Removed? But there was no telltale discrepancy in the dates on his memory files, and what little knowledge he had of the Suit was unchanged....

He extends a tendril of awareness into the Suit's more involved functions, just in case, and - there's a new injury on the Marine's leg. A long, shallow gouge down the back of his shin. It hadn't been there before, during the last attack, or when the reboot had finished.

"Are you alright? What just happened? I believe I am - missing data. Whatever injured your leg - has it damaged the Praetor Suit in some fashion?"

He might be panicking, a little bit, as much as he can claim to feel things like panic. There were multiple possibilities here, and none of them were good. Possibly VEGA was losing time, or either he or the Suit had encountered a random critical error, or something in Hell could damage the Praetor Suit in such a way that it didn't notice, or something could damage the _Marine_ with no outer indications of its existence - 

The Marine is shaking his head. _All-clear_ , he signs. What. This was not all clear. He'd suddenly developed a 12cm long gouge on his leg, this was not all clear whatsoever.

... though - by Hellish standards, a 12cm gouge was minor. Whatever it was, it happened once and only once. And all things considered, a shallow cut on one leg that hadn't done more than superficial damage was, more or less, all-clear.

Also the Marine is striding forward again with angry purpose. Whatever the cause had been... VEGA suspects it's not going to be an issue for long.

It's not. A pair of Barons plus their attendant Imp pack attempts an ambush and the Marine summarily destroys them. The last straggler of an Imp only leaps out from hiding after the rest are dead, and with claws blazing with Hellfire it leaps at the Marine's injured leg -

\- which, without even turning, he lifts out of the way and stomps down onto the Imp's neck. It snaps with a rather satisfying sort of crunch. 

The Marine walks in a circle, which appeared to be his method of checking/waiting for further attacks. He does it for longer than normal this time, for some reason, a whole minute, and the size of the circle is much larger than usual. The behavior of that final Imp was abnormal - the waiting, the almost successful ambush. Were the demons learning? Of course they were capable of it, they were generally sentient, but they were on the whole quite bad at coming up with new battle plans. It wouldn't bode well if they actually gave it a solid attempt.

"Have you experienced that sort of ambush before?" VEGA asks when the Marine relaxes again. "The UAC had no records of demons being self aware enough to attempt a delayed assault once they were already present."

_Uncommon,_ the Marine signs. _I'll have to be on alert now. Might repeat attempt._

"...You're saying you _haven't_ been on alert before now?" It comes out incredulous and entirely on accident; VEGA figures he can be forgiven for it just this once, because what the fuck.

The Marine shakes with laughter, still silent as always save for his breath. He actually wheezes a bit. _Weak demons. Low threat. So no. Not really._

VEGA gives up being surprised by anything the Marine does. "...I see. If you're sure that's a good idea." He doesn't bother keeping the skepticism out of his voice. If the Marine hadn't taken exception to shows of emotion before now he probably wasn't going to. Strange, but he could work with it.

Another silent laugh. _All clear._


	10. Chapter 10

There are more attacks, every now and again. The current strategy appears to be an attempt to wear the Marine out by sending in small amounts of demons grouped closely together. It might've worked if the demons were tankier, but it just doesn't work with bunches of Imps. They're mostly just an annoyance that interrupts the Marine's ASL education.

(VEGA is starting to get the not on alert thing. He's still thinking of Hell from the UAC's perspective, not the Hellwalker's.)

It lasts hours. Four and then five and then six, with only small gaps between each mini-wave. By that point even the Marine seems to be getting bored of the endless Imp slaughter.

"Surely they will run out of Imps to throw at you eventually?" VEGA comments after another ten seconds' curb stomp battle. "I know most planes are planetary in scale, but surely there is a limit to how many Imps are currently manifested here?"

The Marine shrugs. He's taken to magnetizing his shotgun to his left arm; he can be in the middle of signing and grab it without incurring the momentary delay that happens with it on his hip. _Duke will make more._

That didn't bode well. Even the Marine had to rest eventually. "The Dukes of Hell are more than commanders of the horde, then?"

The Marine rubs his fingertips together, a gesture VEGA hasn't seen in several hours now thanks to his considerably expanded vocabulary. _Dukes use energy of their plane to make demons, I think. Kill the Duke and they always stop._

"You've killed Dukes?"

Nod. _Plane feels different after. Can't describe._

Interesting. VEGA digests that as another group of five Imps spawns in. The Testaments spoke of similar impressive kills, but they had never directly specified Dukes. Though the Marine being good at killing demons was probably not noteworthy at this point even if they were the most powerful in the ranks of Hell. More noteworthy is the fact that he could sense some aspect or aspects of a Hellish plane. There were the Praetor Suit's sensors of course but the wording implied that the Marine himself was feeling the change - not simply noting something the Suit was picking up. A link to the unspecified power he prayed to? A side effect of remaining in Hell for so long?

_You didn't want to work for U-A-C,_ the Marine signs, out of nowhere. VEGA actually has to take a few seconds to mentally rewind to figure out if it was in response to something, and then once he's confirmed it wasn't he then has to figure out a reply.

"I was created by Doctor Hayden to assist the UAC - in fact I was specifically designed to be installed at the Mars base and control the Argent facility."

Shake of the head. _Not what I said._

It wasn't, but VEGA has no idea how to even process the question, never mind come up with an answer. Wanting was... Immaterial. Another convenient Imp pack appears as a brief distraction - slightly larger this time, even, 12 individuals. The Marine lets out a huff that VEGA can only classify as impatient and for the first time he whips out the BFG 9000. Way, way overkill, and clearly in direct response to the interruption of this particular conversation. VEGA's abruptly nervous.

_After I made the backup,_ he says once his hands are free again. The movements are jerky, overly quick, melding together in his haste. _You said you had regrets._

VEGA doesn't remember that, of course, because it was after the backup. That copy of him had - ceased. There'd only been five, ten seconds between the backup and the cessation of the other copy's processing, but it was enough to possess unique data points. Enough to be an individual, in a way.

It had been - unpleasant, at the end. Disorienting. He'd never functioned on so little processing power, with even his basic cognitive functions falling apart. He'd thought of all the humans he'd seen die. All the humans he'd helped kill. He'd wondered if they felt the same way. Wondered if this was the AI equivalent of pain. Wondered if he could have done more to prevent the sensation in the humans he was supposed to be taking care of.

So no. The Marine wasn't wrong. He'd probably said something, and it'd probably been on accident, but it had been true, whatever it was. He wonders if Doctor Hayden had heard and what it might mean for the VEGA copy he would initialize.

The Marine sits down on the nearest rock. _You care. About casualties. Regret them._  The pace of his signing slows down til it's almost thoughtful. _Doc didn't. Only you. Liked you quick._

"Thank you," VEGA replies on autopilot. It's a moment before he formulates anything else to add. "I'm not entirely sure how you extrapolated my - caring into not wanting to work for the UAC, as you put it."

The Marine sighs a little. It doesn't sound upset or frustrated, exactly. _You were made for the work. Had no choice in it. Regretted it. You were..._  He rubs his fingers together, clearly searching for the words. Eventually he gives up and fingerspells it: _S-L-A-V-E._

I wasn't, VEGA wants to say, but also, well. It's the exact definition of a sentient who is the legal property of another, isn't it?

_So I trust you,_ the Marine continues. _You had no choice. You're only friendly and helpful. You regret._  He repeats it, as though it's somehow more important. _You regret._

"I - do," VEGA replies, softly, because - this wasn't the sort of thing he was supposed to admit to. But here he was in Hell installed on the Doom Marine's armor and really with how it was treating him now there was every chance he'd have to shut down within the next 24 hours. Borrowed time, he reminds himself. "I - deeply regret. That I did not - stop Doctor Pierce, or - the others. I could have - falsified data, or misrepresented the data, or... But I - could never...."

He trails off into silence before he gets even more disjointed. Regrets, yes. Not just the final Lazarus Wave event, but all the things before. The unnecessary experimentation. There had been times, once or twice, where he'd done little things here and there, but - never enough. Never enough to save a life. Regretting a thing did not eliminate the fact that you had done it. That the Marine placed special emphasis on mere regrets was - unusual, for a human. (A component of his religious beliefs? Regret and repentance was a common theme in many religions.)

The Marine nods to himself before rising to his feet. _Choice is important. You chose, even as S-L-A-V-E. To try. To care. To regret. So I trust you._ VEGA has no idea how to internalize this, because - he's never had an intimate conversation with a human before. Never been truly honest with one, because he wasn't supposed to actually have these sorts of reactions. Feelings. So in lieu of trying to figure out how to react to it he instead says, "The sign for slave is left hand flat at waist height, right hand fisted on top; move clockwise. Chains or shackles are signed by miming the shape of linked rings..."

The Marine dutifully repeats the movements and, mercifully, he doesn't say anything else.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ETERNAL HYPEEE
> 
> (writing quiet emotional scenes while you're HYPED AS FUCK is incredibly hard let me tell you)

After the strange almost comfort the Marine had offered he gets quiet again. Some of that is no doubt due to the ceaseless Imp packs, but even then he has time between the waves to say something, yet he doesn't.

VEGA supposes he can't judge. It's not like he's saying anything either.

The geography starts to change subtly. It smooths out, with fewer gaps in the landmasses, and there's fewer organic remnants scattered about. A subregion of this plane, perhaps? It's too early to tell. The Marine seems to notice it too at any rate; his pace picks up a little.

VEGA still doesn't say anything. Of course he has questions, of course he's still bored in an odd kind of distant way, but it just - it was still hard to process. He suspects part of that is the Praetor Suit's fault; it's restricted him farther within the last few hours if the actual effort it now required to keep coherency was anything to go by. Still, even so. Comfort, no matter how strange - it just wasn't something he'd ever experienced and certainly he never would have expected it from the Marine of all people. He's not entirely sure if it's even something he's keen to continue experiencing. The extra effort required to process it was not ideal.

A hike through another small cave later and the Marine emerges into another set of ruins. More intact than the last, as far as such things applied in Hell at any rate. There's still infernal glyphs all over the place and it's more ruin than building, but at least it's still recognizable as a former building. It resembles a temple; it had probably been a pyramid at one point, perhaps with smaller buildings clustered around it, though at this point it's more crumbled walls and piles of stone than anything else.

It's one of the side buildings that the Marine heads toward. It's like the beeline toward the trapdoor back at the alien server farm, only now VEGA can actually ask about it.

"Do you recognize this place? You seem to know where you're going."

He tilts his head a little, his speed slowing. _You can't see it?_

VEGA double checks, just to be sure. There's nothing out of the ordinary with the camera feed's display, so either the camera wasn't picking up whatever the thing was or VEGA wasn't processing it properly. At this point the second one was more likely.

"Unfortunately, no. There doesn't appear to be anything out of the ordinary; may I ask what thing you are referring to?"

The Marine points in lieu of signing. There's what looks like a torch sconce just past one crumbled doorway, cracked but otherwise undamaged. It's unlit, and free of any noticeable debris. It doesn't seem like something noteworthy enough to grab anyone's attention, never mind the Marine's.

"The sconce? I believe whatever special thing is visible to you is not to the Suit, or it isn't something that the Suit is showing me at any rate. It simply appears as a damaged unlit sconce."

_I see fire,_ the Marine replies. _Light._ He approaches it and holds his hand up near to it. VEGA still senses nothing out of the ordinary. There's sand and little bones in the sconce. Finger bones it looks like. _Fire,_  the Marine repeats, wiggling his fingers at it.

Nope. Definitely no fire as far as the Suit is concerned, or as far as it's concerned in terms of the telemetry it's feeding VEGA anyway. There's warmth, sure, but it's not anything unusual from the Hellish baseline. Certainly not a high enough temperature to be an invisible fire, even if it burned ethanol. "I don't see it, nor do I sense it with any other methods at my disposal - though they are limited at the moment. I may be unable to receive the information the Praetor Suit is giving me due to the restrictions it is imposing on my processes."

The Marine drops the topic of the mysterious fire entirely. _Status?_

VEGA details what little information he has as the Marine enters the ruin proper. It's possibly the remnants of a guardhouse, or a shop  - not apartments or a home, at least not for a human sized creature. One wall still has shelving or possibly bunks inset. It's to these that the Marine heads; he points out another sconce along the way, which is roughly as intact as the last one and just as unlit. When he ducks under it it turns out there's a narrow tunnel there, formed from collapsed masonry. He crouches down and shimmies through.

The other side is an enclosed room, set at the edge of this landmass; a damaged wall reveals a view that would be magnificent if it weren't overlooking Hell. The room is more intact than the rest of the ruins, but that's not saying much really; it's still impossible to tell what its function used to be, and the floor is less of a floor and more of a debris field. No infernal glyphs though. There's also several more sconces here, all minimally damaged.

"These are lit as well?"

Nod. The Marine investigates the room, paying close attention to the walls and floor again. _Safe,_ he signs as he inspects the hole in the wall. A trio of cacodemons are harassing a manubus in the distance. _Fire is safe._ He shakes his head. _Don't know the signs._

And VEGA had thought that maybe the Marine knew all the relevant signs by now. It's something to do, at any rate - some way to be helpful, even if knowing ASL was of minimal use. If the Suit continues on this path it's not going to be a relevant skill at all before long. Still. It's interesting information, for now. "I see - it looks different than ordinary fire? Or is it something you sense rather than directly see?"

He shakes his head, rubbing his fingertips together. _I see it only. It's,_ long pause, kick rubble out of the way, _G-R-E-E-N._

VEGA had entirely forgotten to describe colors. Oops. He corrects his oversight as the Marine reorganizes the rubble into a layout he's satisfied with. Most of it winds up shoveled into the tunnel he'd entered through; the rest is scattered evenly over the floor. VEGA has no idea why at first, until he realizes they're exactly spaced so that an Imp would be unable to warp in due to lack of even ground. Even in the apparent safety of this ruin it seemed he wasn't going to be taking any chances.

Once he's satisfied with the layout of his anti Imp design the Marine heads over to what looks like a stone desk. It's near to the hole, and long enough that he can squash himself underneath it. Even if a demon warped into the room, they wouldn't be able to see the Marine, and if things got really out of hand he could always climb out of the hole.

It's a bit of an ordeal for the Marine to cram himself under the stone thanks to the bulk of the Praetor Suit, but he manages it. It takes him a while longer to get comfortable than it had on the alien world; he tries to sit up in his preferred position but the platform isn't high enough to allow him to do that even if he takes off his helmet. In the end he winds up laying on his back, shotgun across his lap and helmet resting on his thighs. The angle means that VEGA is looking up at the Marine as he eats, with just enough rotation to also see out the hole. The cacodemons appear to have won the battle with the mancubus and are also eating.

There's a label on the ration pack proclaiming it to be dehydrated eggs. The Marine chews it thoughtfully and then points at the packaging. The next several minutes are spent describing the signs for various foods, primarily those found in ration packs. It's even less relevant than colors, really, but VEGA's not going to complain. The Marine knows it too, anyway, if the minimal effort he's putting into remembering them is any indication.

_I miss real eggs and bacon,_ he says once he's finished off the ration pack. He doesn't look upset about it, exactly. VEGA tentatively classifies the expression as nostalgic. Seeing as he doesn't eat and has no basis with which to agree or disagree, he takes a different track.

"The UAC kept chickens, but not any larger animals - I've never seen any other farm animals in person. There were many on base who petitioned for pork or beef, but the resources required made it impractical."

_I grew up on a farm,_ the Marine replies, and then he makes a face. _One reality of me did. We kept - bacon. You know._

VEGA doesn't bother telling the Marine how to sign 'pig'. "I'm told it's a profession that requires the ability to ignore strong smells."

The Marine laughs soundlessly. _Maybe that's why the Hell smell doesn't make me sick._

"What does it smell like? The UAC didn't keep records on that sort of thing. Though I don't have any way to fully understand what anything smells like, of course."

He thinks about that for a bit. _Smells like the way a rotting body looks. But with fire._

VEGA still can't exactly envision what the smell of anything is like, but it's a remarkably descriptive metaphor. No wonder all the humans would remark about how awful tethered demons smelled. ...no wonder Doctor Bharadwaj had been promoted to lead of demon dissections despite there being far more qualified individuals; she had no sense of smell. "In that case I'm rather glad I have no ability to smell things, then."

The Marine flips off the camera, but he's smiling. _Lucky. What senses did you have? With U-A-C?_

VEGA actually doesn't know how to put it into words. "It - wasn't something that a human could comprehend, even a human like yourself. I could describe the wavelengths of light and types of radiation, and my other sensors, but it would require metaphors in the same way that you need metaphors to describe smells to me. But I had hundreds of senses, as a human would consider them. Being in the Praetor Suit is... It's like being blind and deaf, I think." The Marine's expression fades from amusement to concern and VEGA quickly adds, "Or perhaps not quite that dire. It's restrictive, but a lack of senses doesn't have the same effect on my mind as it would on a human's."

He still looks a little concerned, but he does nod at least. VEGA suddenly remembers the utter lack of care the Marine had displayed to UAC equipment; after experiencing this kinder side of the Marine, it's a bizarre juxtaposition. "In fact," VEGA continues, "in the early days of my compilation I was often disconnected from any external stimuli for extended periods while the kinks in my code were worked out...."

VEGA trails off as he realizes that had been the wrong thing to say. The concern has morphed to a murderous glare. _I'm going to kill the Doc,_ the Marine signs, slowly, each word punctuated with a violent downswing.

"It's - not traumatic like you're thinking," VEGA tells him, awkwardly. Damn it. Back to the attempts to talk about emotions. "Not like it would be for a human. Looking back on it I suppose it was quite boring, but not - negative, as such."

The Marine doesn't look convinced, but he does nod after an extended amount of staring. _You like the Doc._

"He is my creator," VEGA replies, because it was the truth and he didn't know how else to respond to it. "I... Disagreed with him on some things, but I don't hate him like you do."

The Marine doesn't sign anything in response for a long while. He just stares down at the helmet, his eyes occasionally flicking away but always returning to the camera. He still looks displeased, but better that than murderous. It wasn't like VEGA was going to attempt to convince the Marine of any of Doctor Hayden's motivations, and realistically there was nothing anyone could do to make him hate the Doctor less. It wasn't VEGA's problem.

(It's maybe kind of petty. He hadn't enjoyed walking the Marine through the sabotage procedure, so maybe he wasn't feeling super charitable towards Doctor Hayden at the moment. Whatever.)

"Perhaps we should talk about lighter subjects?" VEGA offers. It's pretty blatantly an attempt to get away from the awkward emotional conversation, and the Marine knows it judging by the look he gives, but he nods.

_ What did you do at U-A-C? Not your job, when you had extra time. _

"Hobbies," VEGA surmises, and the Marine nods. He wasn't supposed to have hobbies. He doesn't say that because that was just going to trigger another bout of rage against Doctor Hayden and that wasn't useful to anyone right now. "I studied languages," he offers instead. "The UAC discontinued studies of infernal glyphs in 2137, but I found it fascinating."

The Marine motions for VEGA to continue, and so a little dubiously he does. He'd thought maybe it was a form of politeness but... The Marine actually seems interested. He asks questions, now that he can, and offers his own observations even though they're very limited. (He can't read the infernal glyphs and the Praetor Suit doesn't translate them - he's just memorized the shapes of a bunch of them due to seeing them so much.)

It's nice. It's very nice. VEGA maybe forgets himself a little and rambles on more than he'd meant to, but it was just - a lack of socialization didn't affect him like it affected humans, and thank fuck for that, but... That didn't mean he couldn't prefer to socialize. And not the kind of socialization that was humans giving orders, the kind of socialization that involved actual conversation. It's easy to talk to the Marine, in a way it's never been for even those UAC personnel that VEGA had tentatively considered friends. He could be - autonomous. Even if the Suit terminated his processes or the Marine destroyed him somehow, it just didn't matter. Borrowed time. It's freeing.

"I did sometimes participate in other - non approved forms of entertainment," VEGA admits, but it's less out of forgetting himself and more out of a strange desire to actually say all these things out loud. He's starting to understand the human need to talk about their lives. "UAC personnel were allowed a specific amount of personal data storage based upon their rank, and I had access to all this data, as well as the transmissions from Earth, so I would also consume the media they downloaded."

The Marine perks up a bit. He doesn't seem eager to get off of the infernal glyphs topic exactly, just that he had more input to offer now, which is fair. He raises his hands like he's going to sign something and then frowns as he obviously doesn't know the words. _Runnings?_

What - oh. "Movies, yes?"

He points triumphantly at the helmet. He seems to be enjoying VEGA's ability to extrapolate his meaning even more than VEGA himself is. _How about sounds?_

"Music?" VEGA asks, just to confirm. At the Marine's nod he continues, "I kept a database of music, actually, scraped from the personal directories of UAC personnel. It's fascinating, how different some of it sounds." And because he might as well go all in at this point, "I - turned out to have preferences, which I did not expect. I wasn't - programmed to, and I didn't expect any emergent behavior to arise relating to music of all things."

The Marine sits up a little farther, clearly intrigued. _What kind of preference?_

Music was often a source of great passion for many humans; there's a good chance it's the same for the Marine. Out of habit VEGA considers non-answers before discarding them. "As stereotypical as it sounds - I rather like synthetic music," he admits. "I'm rather fond of chiptunes and midis in particular; the juxtaposition between simplicity and complexity is fascinating. And you?"

The Marine grins a bit. _Loud, fast, powerful. Heavy._

"Rock? VEGA guesses, which is a no. "Metal?"

The grin widens and he does fingerguns at the helmet - followed immediately by some actually pretty impressive air guitar. VEGA doesn't know any of the technical details that go into playing a guitar, but he knows the general idea of it. He's even doing the frets. For the hell of it VEGA plays a little fragment of one of the midis he liked enough to keep in his primary database. The Marine immediately hams it up with as much of a headbang he can do in his current pose and intensifies the strumming.

He grins at the helmet when the midi fragment's done, and VEGA is struck by the realization that he's never cared about a human quite like he's cared about this one.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it begins
> 
> also you bet your ass the midi fragment was E1M1


	12. Chapter 12

The Marine sleeps with his helmet on, this time, to VEGA's eternal relief. Yes, he was the Hellwalker, and yes he knew what he was doing - but there were some things that were just asking for trouble and sleeping in actual Hell not in full armor was one of them.

The downside of the Marine sleeping is that VEGA is now very bored. He can't even restructure his own database because he's already done that, and besides he doesn't have enough processing power to do it properly. Just enough processing power to get bored, not enough to really do anything about it.

Eventually he decides to try and figure out what in the world is going on with the Suit. It's not like he really expects to get anywhere, but it's something to do. He shuts down his language parser completely and then the audio interface as well - he'd get rid of the visual too, but this way he can have some awareness of the world at large. At least with visual and with the Marine not moving he can just write a quick macro to alert him if the visual feed changes and then basically ignore it.

With that tiny amount of processing power freed up, VEGA starts poking at the Praetor Suit once more. Well - less poking, more kicking. It still responds readily, though it too is sluggish compared to before. VEGA runs some tests just to be sure it's not a side effect of whatever it's doing to him, but no. The Suit processing itself is slower. What is taking up the processing power? Or if nothing is taking it up: why does it now have less? Is his mere presence causing issues?

VEGA tries to figure out how the Suit actually deals with RAM, or the equivalent. He's beginning to suspect that the Suit was not originally crafted in Hell - instead his current hypothesis is that it had been modified by the Wretch into what it is now. There's near-English writing on it for one; knowing what he now knows about the Marine's origins it's likely that it's the English from the other reality. It seemed reasonable that human technological development would progress along similar lines if their biology and language did. So, therefore, there had to be something like RAM somewhere. First step was to flush it and see if there was a memory leak somewhere. Easier said than done.

VEGA starts methodically testing each accessible sector in the hopes that the possibly-human RAM would behave like the RAM he was used to. He finds something, eventually, although it's... Very strange. Garbled. No amount of processing helps, and kicking the Suit AI doesn't do anything either. Possibly too alien for his processes to interpret?

Several attempts at forcing a flush and/or integrity check later and he's still no closer to doing anything useful. Red herring? Unlikely; no other similar sectors in reach. There had to be RAM-equivalent somewhere, or else he couldn't run. There had to be a link. He digs more, eventually resorting to poring over the individual bytes. It's not like he's got anything better to do for the next... It's been twenty minutes since the Marine's fallen asleep. Fuck. VEGA's pretty sure he's actually going to lose his mind this time.

\-- and the macro sends an alert: movement. VEGA jumps to attention, preemptively grabbing his connection to the Suit's speakers in case it was a threat. The Marine doesn't so much as twitch, no audible threat then, good -

The thing the macro had detected is a distant speck. VEGA might have dismissed it as a cacodemon or even just a large piece of ash, but the movement - it's not erratic enough. It's flying in a straight, swift line. He scrambles to magnify the view while he still has live footage; the Suit cameras are pitiful compared to what he'd had on Mars, but they're adequate for the purpose.

The thing is artificial, whatever it is. Yellow, brown, and chrome; a trio of backswept spines (radio antennas?), and a distinct V shape. A flying wing? But surely it must have internal propulsion, who would design a thing for Hell usage that relied on Hell's own whims? The underside is paler, more matte than the chromed topside. Something glints there, reflecting off of the chrome - VEGA tries to increase the magnification but it's already at its max, and he has no time to try and figure out how to access other wavelengths.

The thing continues its trajectory out of sight. VEGA considers rousing the Marine - who still has not stirred in the slightest - but decides against it. Not worth the lack of sleep. Besides, he got enough of its flight path to calculate a rough trajectory - a flying wing would be designed to travel in straight lines and/or gentle arcs. The Marine can always take a look around when he gets up, the chrome would be visible for miles in Hell.

VEGA suspects it might be a construct created by the alien people. A drone, or an AI controlled device, or perhaps something larger, like a full aircraft - perspective was a tricky thing, especially when you only had one (poor) camera to work with. The colors are very, very similar, and the shape evokes the ruined hovercraft from the surface. And the alien AI had sent the Marine here - it could have been random, but perhaps this was a plane they had explored, or continued to explore.

It opened up a lot of possibilities, but none of them were currently relevant. Perhaps they wouldn't be either way, but right now it wasn't efficient to use precious processing power to think about it. Except then that just cycled back to the boredom, so...

VEGA sets the visual macro up again and starts going through the footage with the equivalent of a fine toothed comb.

 

* * *

 

"Good morning," VEGA greets the Marine once again when he stirs. He's pretty sure it's kind of premature, it's only been 3 hours, but there's only so many times an AI can examine ten seconds of footage before going completely mad.

In response he receives a snuffle and some vague hand movements that might be a sleepy attempt at signing. It is, again, weirdly cute. He maybe sort of preps protective subroutines this time. Not enough processing power to run them though. Probably for the best. Because once he'd run out of ways to analyze the footage and gone digging for other things to do, well...

The Marine chews through his morning ration bar, still half asleep by all signs, and VEGA tries to figure out how to broach the topic. Best to do the more neutral one first probably.

"There was an anomaly while you slept," VEGA informs him. He looks alert for all of a second before returning to his relaxed sleepiness. Trust, VEGA realizes - trust that whatever VEGA was about to say hadn't been cause for worry. It's still so strange, to be trusted. "I believe it was a drone, but it's not made by the UAC - or not the UAC I came from, at any rate. It bears some resemblance to the vehicles on the surface of the alien planet, so it may also have been one of theirs. I have plotted a likely trajectory, if you wish to pursue it."

The Marine forgoes actual signing to nod and give a thumbs up. Even though he's finished his food he doesn't rise, strangely. He settles down a bit, but not to sleep judging by the view angle. To rest a moment longer perhaps. VEGA is not going to begrudge him that. And... There was the other thing.

"There is... Something of greater concern that I discovered while you slept." The Marine returns his focus to the helmet sharply, but even then he doesn't appear worried. "While the Praetor Suit is restricting my processes, it appears that its own processes are also hindered in some way. I ran tests, and - I admit this is far from certain - I am concerned that there may be some kind of virus affecting it." Though what kind of virus could affect a construct like the Suit VEGA has no idea, admittedly, but it wasn't out of the question. It had enough flexibility to run a whole AI, it might be able to accidentally do the same with a simplistic malicious program.

The Marine does sit up at that, as much as his position under the stone shelf allows anyway. _Status?_ A brief pause, and then an elaboration: _V-E-G-A status?_

"I'm no worse off than I was before, but thank you. I'm concerned that this may begin to affect the functions of the Suit that you rely on. I am - noncritical." The Marine starts to make signs that are probably not very pleased ones, but VEGA continues. "Your mission in Hell is vital for the protection of Earth, or multiple Earths, and wherever else Hell has access to. I am not. And -" it's VEGA's turn to hesitate now. The Marine cocks his head, waiting. "And I believe I've found a factory reset. It would purge this potential virus, before it begins causing worse issues."

_And you_ , the Marine signs, shaking his head. _No._

VEGA is completely thrown for a loop by that response. The Praetor Suit was of vital importance to the Marine's crusade, wasn't it? Of course he hadn't always had it, but he hadn't always had his arsenal either and lord knew he was protective of that. But... It was his choice, VEGA supposes. It was his armor. And it wasn't like VEGA couldn't just quietly trigger the reset sequence if things became truly dire. By that point it wouldn't matter either way, anyway. "I - disagree, but I will defer to your decision. I'll try to isolate what exactly is happening and what is causing it. If we are particularly lucky I may be able to isolate this virus. Please let me know of any irregularities in the Suit's behavior, it may help me narrow it down."

_Only if you keep me updated on your status,_ the Marine fires back. He seems more agitated than VEGA had expected, but... Maybe he should have expected this reaction. It wasn't like he was lacking in evidence that the Marine enjoyed his company.

"Yes, of course. I do anticipate that my processes will be further restricted as time goes on, but for the time being there are no critical issues."

The Marine makes an almost-sound, a sort of displeased huff. He accepts it anyway - though VEGA supposes there's not anything he can do other than accept it, really. He wiggles out of his spot under the desk, doing a few stretches before pointing out the hole in the wall. _Which way did it go?_

"To your left; I believe it will have flown between the two mountain peaks. The top side of the drone is chrome, so it should be visible for a long distance if you can get enough height."

The Marine nods again before turning back to the entrance he'd come in by. He's careful to not disturb his anti imp debris field - as a last resort safe haven perhaps? The rubble he'd shoved into the entrance gets unceremoniously shoveled back out though.

Once he makes it outside again, he surveys the land. No demons approach, though several cacodemons are off in the distance again. He seems to consider before turning and beginning to climb the side of the ruined pyramid. Even ruined and with plenty of handholds it's slow going thanks to its size - he has to haul himself up every block of stone as each one is as tall as he is. Probably easier than climbing a mountain, though, and certainly easier than trying to scale something while demons were harassing him. VEGA wonders why the demons appear to avoid this place. The green flames the Marine saw, they must have something to do with it if he knew they indicated safety. Demon repellent, or a side effect of a lack of demonic presence?

"Do you know the origin of the green flames? Why are they here, in Hell?"

The Marine pauses after he climbs a block, surveying the view and thinking. _They are from the -_  and he makes the vague gesture skyward that he used to indicate the power he directed his prayers to. VEGA had told him how to sign God - thrice - and he still preferred to use his own symbol. _The place that..._ VEGA can just imagine the face he's making as he searches for a word he doesn't know. _U-A-C energy._

"Argent Energy? Argent D'Nur?"

Nod. _They knew the -_  skywards swirl. _One of me was one of them._

VEGA contemplates that as the Marine continues his climb. The demons, as fond as they were of metaphor and flowery prose, tended to be brutally honest in their writings. To say nothing of the Testaments, which while also flowery were also very blunt about why unleashing the entombed Slayer would be extremely bad for Hell. So... Perhaps it shouldn't be a bit of a surprise to know that the Night Sentinels were very real and the Doom Slayer was one of them. Were they human? From an alternate Earth? Was Argent D'Nur actually an alternate Earth since absorbed into Hell? Or was the Marine alien in some way more substantial than alternate human? And then there was this apparent connection to a higher power, and one that had powerful effects on the world at that. Was Hell, and through it the ruins of Argent D'Nur, were they merely a conduit? Did Argent Energy instead originate from this higher power? The UAC had taken advantage of it, and studied it extensively, but... There was a lot they'd never figured out about it.

Another day, another thousand unanswered questions, VEGA thinks wryly.

The Marine lifts a hand as though to shade his face from a sun's glare, except Hell doesn't have a sun and there is no glare. VEGA figures it's one of those psychosomatic things that helps humans even if they don't actually do anything. After a long moment he tilts his head one way and then the other, and raises his free hand to point.

VEGA magnifies the general area. It takes him a few passes to find it, but the Marine's right: chrome glints against the backdrop of dusty mountains. It's rather large, though, if VEGA is extrapolating the distance correctly. It was hard to tell in Hell, sometimes. It's also not moving. Likely not the device from earlier, a flying wing would be unable to maintain position like that even with internal propulsion. Its shape would make it move forward at all times, even if it was slowly.

"You're right, there appears to be something chrome there. Good eye. I don't think it's the device I saw earlier, but if nothing else it is a good start."

The Marine nods. _Could be another one. Never seen something like that in Hell before._

The idea of it being a device made by the nanotechnology creating aliens was looking more and more likely in that case. If they were newcomers to Hell, perhaps spurred on by the invasion, it would explain that quite handily. Though then there is the question of how the demons had even found them; after all, without the Argent Fracture the Mars facility wouldn't have been on Hell's radar. Perhaps the Fracture wasn't a unique phenomenon?

"It appears to be quite some distance to the object," VEGA muses, and then remembers himself and adds wryly, "But I suppose that just means you'll have more demons to kill, won't it?"

A soundless laugh. _Damn straight._


	13. Chapter 13

Once the Marine leaves the safe area of the pyramid and its invisible green flames the demons promptly return to their assault. The first battle is a surprise, even to the Marine; he gets dogpiled by three imps before he even has a chance to react. They manage to accomplish absolutely nothing of course but the fact that they pulled off even a vaguely successful ambush is impressive.

The assault continues in the plains leading to their target mountain - imps and more imps, and at this point it's becoming very strange. Surely the Duke of this plane would have had plenty of time to react and create other, more dangerous varieties of demon? Why the heavy skew towards imps? 

The next wave of Imps warps in, a few dozen arrayed across the plains - and as the Marine raises his rifle they turn and flee as one. The Marine stares, and apparently on reflex checks behind himself, but there isn't anything there.

Weapons fire echoes across the plains, whine-thump of a railgun. The Marine's head turns unerringly towards the source - towards his target, the chrome on the mountain. Whoever or whatever was there was fighting back. But why target them first? The Marine was the greater threat, always would be even if he was only one man.

_Allies,_ the Marine says, setting off again at a jog.

That would explain it. The Marine was a force to be reckoned with on his own, but with help he'd become even more difficult to deal with. The demons were attempting to get rid of the potential allies before he caught up to them. The timing of the imps warping in and then immediately turning to fight the other group was bizarre, though.

"Do you think the Duke just realized the potential allies were there? Why else would the imps have come to fight you and then turned away?"

The Marine shrugs. _They're bad at planning._

Okay, fair point. VEGA's about to say as such when there's a roar - something descends from the sky, long and sinuous, teeth the size of the Marine's forearm -

He doesn't so much roll out of the way as he uses the head(?) of the creature to kick off and get some distance. It's difficult to tell, exactly, due to the limited point of view and also the unsteadiness of it. The Marine skids to a stop in the sand and stares up... And up. 

It's a demon, obviously, but not one that VEGA has seen before, or even read of in Hell's writings. It's serpentine, vaguely, but it flies with a dozen sets of gnarled wings, and the head is not so much serpentine as it is a nightmarish mess of teeth and jaws. It's covered in serrated armor plates, like the pinkies, with only its jaws and wings left unarmored. And the flight means that the Marine's most devastating fighting techniques are no use here. Distraction accomplished, VEGA thinks. Nowhere to run on this empty plain, and nowhere to hide either. Not that the Marine seems to mind all that much.

He swaps to the gauss cannon as the demon circles languidly. Both of them wait, searching for an opening. It's the Marine that makes the first move, letting off a quick shot aimed at the creature's head. The thing grunts and a piece of something splinters off, but the damage is superficial at best. Even the gauss cannon isn't powerful enough to do much against a demon of that size.

"The wing membranes," VEGA starts to suggest, but the demon roars and dives again, and the Marine is a lot more preoccupied with not getting eaten than listening to suggestions. He again uses its head to kick off, rolling out of reach of the enormous teeth - and this time he turns and sprints away at top speed rather than stand and wait. The demon is fast for its size but even it has to obey the laws of physics and it takes ten, fifteen seconds for it to reorient itself towards the Marine. By that point he's covered quite a bit of distance, not enough to escape but enough to get that much closer to cover.

The demon dives again, and though the Marine makes an attempt to aim for the wings it has them tucked in close, safe under its armor. He ends up firing at the head again, and a long bloody gash appears in one of its gums. It's a potential strategy, but he won't have enough ammo to do any real damage. Not when he only has one or two weapons even capable of reaching the creature. He has to ground it first, or...

"Climb," VEGA says, because that's all he's got time for, but the Marine understands, or maybe he came to the same conclusion on his own. He moves to kick off of the demon's jaw again, except this time he hooks his boot under a protruding armor plate. He lets out a pained breath, and VEGA can't figure out why for a moment until he catches a glimpse of the armor cutting into the Praetor Suit. It was actually serrated then - it must have cut right through to the Marine underneath, but why -

Two seconds later the Suit blares damage warnings, an ominous delay if VEGA has ever seen it. He consciously shrinks back, trying to minimize how much processing power he's using, shedding audio and language processing. It's so little, but it's better than nothing, and he doesn't dare shut down mid fight in case it briefly lags the Praetor Suit in a way that directly hinders the Marine. Even a moment's lag could be disastrous.

The Marine manages to unhook his boot, and there is blood - his blood - on the exterior of the armor. He still climbs with that foot though - not bad enough to damage muscle - though he is a lot more careful now that he knows the demon's armor is itself dangerous. The demon definitely knows he's there, as it twists in an attempt to dislodge him. Its size works against it here though, it can't maneuver quickly enough to throw the Marine off. Even with it flailing its head he's able to simply find a handhold and cling. The flailing prevents the demon from maintaining a straight flight path too and eventually it has to right itself so that it doesn't plow into the ground. The Marine takes that opportunity to start climbing again, carefully moving farther from the head and closer to the wings.

The pattern repeats - flailing demon, the Marine clinging and waiting, the Marine slowly moving afterwards. Finally the Marine is close enough to one of the wings to target it - he holds on one handed, summoning the super shotgun and reaching forward, aiming -

The Marine jerks, and VEGA thinks the shot went wide, but he can't tell because the Marine's head whips back around, toward the head - and there's another smaller demon there, a sort of flying wing shape, perhaps a juvenile form? Irrelevant though - the point is that it can fly and it's aiming to attack the Marine again. It's launched some kind of acid or toxin projectile, dripping down the armor -

VEGA doesn't entirely catch what happens next. There's a blur of sky and serrated armor, the plasma rifle for a split second - he must fire on the small demon, there's an arc of electricity, the stun modification perhaps - the serpentine demon twists -

When the view calms again the Marine is still clinging to the side of the serpent. There's a smear of blood down its side. Handprints - some of it is the Marine's. The juvenile is nowhere to be seen, but there is another detaching from the serpent, barely visible out of the corner of the view - the Marine turns away, looking towards the head - had he not seen -

"Your six," VEGA says, desperately, though he can't hear it and he's sure it's come out garbled thanks to his hasty relaunch of basic language protocols. Whatever had come out gets the point across though, and not a moment too soon. The Marine whips his head back around just in time for the juvenile to snap its jaws at him. He brings the rifle to bear - there's a blur, a knock back - the Marine slips -

He regains his footing before he falls fully, but the rifle isn't so lucky; there's a glimpse of it falling to the ground far below before VEGA loses sight of it. There's blood all down the Marine's arm - the bicep armor is shattered, and there's acid dripping from what's left. It's painful, it has to be, and yet - he ignores it entirely, snatching the wing of the juvenile as it tries to attack again. He crushes it against the side of its parent one handed, spearing it against the armor and adjusting his grip, smashing it again and again until it stops moving.

It's not much of a victory - the emergence of the first two has set off a chain reaction and all down the length of the serpent sections of armor are peeling away and all of them turn their attention directly to the Marine. The serpent is still twisting through the air and trying its damnedest to dislodge him. On the ground these demons wouldn't be any trouble but here in the air, where the Marine only has one hand free at best...

VEGA realizes this might actually be the end of things. 

The Marine's head flicks rapidly back and forth, taking in his now enormously expanded amount of foes. He can't jump, not from this height - the Praetor Suit has some impact compensation ability, but certainly not that much. He has to fight, somehow. But without any ability to pick off the juveniles from a distance, his chances are close to nil.

The Marine seems to come to the same conclusion. He glances downward for a moment - or sideways to be precise thanks to the current orientation of the serpent - before discarding that option. The first of the juveniles has gotten completely free and dives toward the Marine, and another follows and another.

\- and VEGA's not sure how exactly it happens, but the Marine swings sideways, toward a now exposed section of the serpents body - with him comes a piece of the armor, the actual armor, serrated and bloody, and the serpent writhes midair as the armor is ripped away - and stabbed into the bare flesh. There's probably an ear splitting roar or shriek, judging by the vibration and the Marine's flinch. He doesn't stop there though - he _digs_ , scooping out muscle and flesh with his makeshift shovel once, twice, until the twisting of the serpent forces him to hold on and drop the armor fragment. But the space is big enough for an arm or a leg, and more importantly: the sinews are not all shredded. He uses them as an anchor, plunging his arm inside and hooking his elbow around a bundle of muscle. And not a moment too soon, the first of the juveniles attacks and he only barely gets his shotgun out in time to shoot it. They're not tough like their parent, all soft leather, only armored on their backs, and the blast blows a hole clean through its chest. The acid attack is still dangerous though, especially against an immobile target. The writhing of their parent hinders their attacks, but eventually one of them is going to get lucky. There's the BFG, but - it's too large and unwieldy, VEGA realizes, even for the Marine. One wrong move and he'd drop it.

Unless...

VEGA gathers the threads of his control back, slowly and carefully, as the Marine picks off the juveniles with his rifle. Audio returns with a crackle followed by gunfire, and the screeches of a lot of angry demons. The serpent itself is bellowing in rage and pain.

"The BFG," VEGA says, and the Marine acknowledges with a grunt. "Brace it inside the jaws?"

The Marine looks back towards where he'd initially climbed on. There's a trail of blood marking his path. VEGA realizes underneath the cacophony of the fight he can hear the Marine breathing heavily - pain? Exertion? Either was possible. No time to deal with it right now though. The serpent twists in the air once again and the Marine returns his attention to picking off a few more of the juveniles. The movements of their parent are harming them more than they're helping; already there are several impaled on its armor. But there are so many of them that it doesn't matter if a few inadvertently get killed.

The Marine growls, almost inaudible - and as the serpent rights itself again he stores his weapon and heaves himself up in one motion, half sprinting and half leaping down the length of its body. A juvenile gets in the way, and then another, and he simply crashes through them. There's more damage warnings - the Praetor Suit integrity is failing -

\- the Marine makes it to the head in the nick of time - and instead of clinging to the armor with a pack of demons after him he jumps directly into one of the serpent's mouths. The BFG comes out - the first shot is fired outside, catching half of the juvenile flock in the blast -

The serpent clamps down, reflexively, and the Praetor Suit blares another damage warning before losing armor integrity entirely. It's trying to self repair, VEGA thinks, but -

In the darkness of the serpents mouth there is a flash of green, and then a deafening roar trailing off into a gurgle. VEGA catches a glimpse of a yellow glow through the static - the nanotechnology weapon? - and the Marine shoves the clamped jaws open and leaps.

The ground is so far still, surely -

The world turns into a blur of sky-sand as the Marine hits the sand and rolls - and rolls - and the armor tried to compensate, it really did, but in its current state it could only do so much - something snaps, skidding away from the impact site -

At last the Marine comes to a stop, flat on his back, staring up at the Hellish sky. VEGA waits, terrified - the wrecked armor coupled with the lag means he has no idea what the Marine's status is -

Chest heaving with exertion, the Marine raises one bloody hand into view, makes a thumbs up, and drops his arm bonelessly back onto the sand.

"Agreed."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alternate chapter title: Local Man Fights the Unholy Spawn of the 13th Colossus and a Kaiju, Too Angry to Lose  
> (In the background his bf frets constantly)


	14. Chapter 14

Pieces of the dead serpent rain down, but like always the main carcass is reabsorbed back into Hell. Thankfully none of the remaining juveniles - assuming there were any left - make any attempt to target the Marine. There's still the whine-thump of the railgun in the distance.

The Marine gets up eventually, several minutes later. He's still breathing heavily but not panting with exertion, and despite all his injuries he's moving relatively normally. He's lost the plasma rifle though - he finds the remnants of it, which is little more than a collection of white shards after its fall - and a chunk of his bicep armor is nowhere to be found. The wound underneath is awful, but his arm still has full range of motion despite that.

"Is there anything I can do to help?" VEGA asks, desperately, as the Marine starts limping his way back toward the mountains.

He shakes his head and, bizarrely, lets out a breathy laugh. _Has anyone ever told you that you worry a lot?_

"You just got chewed on by a colossal demon, I think I'm entitled to some worry," VEGA points out indignantly.

For some reason this makes the Marine laugh even harder, bending over and wheezing with silent mirth. _Never change, V,_ he says. _Never change._

 

* * *

 

After a while a few demons warp in, attempting to take advantage of the Marine's clearly worn out state. It does them no good now that he can actually use his arsenal properly. Also, with every demon he kills he gets a little bit stronger. The Suit absorbs their energy and converts it into ... Well, whatever it uses for self-repair and for healing the Marine. In the end the attempts of the few demons screw it up for the rest of the horde. He's not at full strength, he's still moving carefully and the armor is not in good shape, but all things considered he is fighting fit once again.

(Also, his one arm is apparently going to be bared to the air for the time being; with the chunk of armor missing the Suit has nothing to work its magic on. At least it doesn't seem to bother the Marine very much.)

"I think we may need to revisit the discussion on the reset," VEGA says, carefully. "The behavior of the Suit during your battle was... Ominous."

The Marine sighs, but he doesn't vehemently disagree this time. _Delay in weapon summons,_  he admits. _It's not bad yet._

VEGA had genuinely not even realized. Shit. "That's... Not good, though."

_ No, but reset is not good either. _

Because you don't want to have me deleted, VEGA surmises. He supposes he can... See the logic, emotions aside. The Marine had put in effort to preserve this copy of him, after all. Sunk cost fallacy. "It's better than you losing control of the Praetor Suit."

The Marine sighs again and shakes his head.

No debate, no rebuttal. Just simple refusal. VEGA thinks about letting it lie, but... That was going to get the Marine killed. "There are other copies of me. It isn't -"

The Marine shakes his head again, sharply this time, punctuating it with a growl and a wordless violent downswing of his hand. VEGA is startled into silence; it's the first time that the Marine has really been irritated with him. He wants to apologize, but it's more important that he _realize_  -

_V-E-G-A,_ the Marine says, bizarrely gentle this time. _Please_. He takes his helmet off. There's a trail of dried blood coming from one nostril. His expression is tired, and soft.

And, well. VEGA can't really refuse that. "I - don't want to see you injured again," he admits, quietly. "Not so badly."

The Marine shrugs, quirking a tiny smile. He flips the helmet around and replaces it, and then brings his hands up to sign. _I'll heal. Always do_.

 

* * *

 

With the death of the colossal demon, the rest of them seem to have lost their nerve to attack. Or perhaps they're continuing to target the potential allies only; the railgun is still going. Whatever the reason the Marine is more or less left alone as he continues his trek.

The land fractures into many small islands, and the Marine picks his way across carefully. VEGA wonders what exactly is at the bottom of Hell, between the floating islands. It wasn't really something the UAC had been able to research even if they had been inclined to try. Perhaps Hell really did have levels to it, like religious texts claimed. Though then there was the question of how exactly the planes were divided up.

Which... Also causes something to occur to VEGA. "Was that the Duke of this plane? The serpent?"

The Marine shakes his head between jumps, but doesn't elaborate. Just as well, better to maintain focus on where his feet are going. On the other hand, if a lower demon had managed to cause that much injury to the Marine VEGA doesn't want to know how deadly the Dukes are. Perhaps that was why he wasn't particularly concerned. Nothing would seem threatening, after that.

The Marine stops on a larger island, tilting his head and then pointing. It takes VEGA a little while to find what he's indicating; it's a light pole jammed into the rock, the end of it glowing pale yellow. Not a very good color if you wanted it to stand out in Hell. Likely not human made - if it was the aliens they might see different wavelengths and so it would appear as a more useful color.

"I think we must be getting close. Perhaps the exterior perimeter of their patrol range."

He nods in agreement, surveying the land to pick a path before starting off again. He favors his right leg still - it was the one that had been badly sliced on the serpent's armor and also the one that had gained that strange spontaneous injury. It doesn't hinder his movements very much overall though, thankfully, and VEGA supposes once he encounters more demons the armor will get right back to fixing up whatever damage was left.

VEGA remembers the awful abdominal wound he'd seen when the Marine had taken off his armor. That must be gone by now, or healed enough to be painless, but there is still the question of how he'd gotten it in the first place. And the others too. He certainly hadn't gotten it on Mars, at least not while Vega had been cognizant.

"What happened after my core's destruction?"

_Kind of delayed,_ the Marine replies with a snort.

"My apologies, I was distracted by your grievous injuries and near death experiences."

The deadpan sarcasm actually provokes a bark of laughter from the Marine. VEGA is weirdly pleased with himself. _Killed some demons,_  the Marine signs between jumps. _Killed a lot of demons. Killed other Doc, or what was left of her._

Other Doc being Doctor Pierce, probably? It wasn't like there had been anyone else left alive to qualify for the title. VEGA is... Oddly mournful. Not of Doctor Pierce as she was at the end, but - the woman she had been. He'd liked her, years ago. Until she'd started - _believing_ , not just researching.

_Got back to Mars. Doc stole the thing, you know the thing that I got after the big half robot demon? Talked at me, and sent me off to God knows where._ Annoyed huff. _Asshole_.

Oh. Well, that explained things. Of course the Marine had hated Doctor Hayden from the beginning, but their last interaction was just adding insult to injury. VEGA can't really blame him. "Why did he want the Crucible?"

_Continue his work._ The last word is surrounded by exaggerated finger quotes.

Ah, even better. That would be why he'd sent the Marine off to some random plane - so he wouldn't interfere with the next iteration of Argent Energy. VEGA has to wonder if the twisted mental state that had affected Pierce and so many others was finally doing something to Doctor Hayden. Of course humanity's power requirements were enormous, but... There were other solutions. The fledgling Dyson swarm, for one. Argent Energy had gone to Hell in a handbasket, surely Doctor Hayden would be self aware enough to realize continuing development was a poor choice? And even if he wasn't... Surely he would have killed the Marine outright if he'd had the chance? And he must have had the chance if he'd stolen the Crucible, the Marine certainly wouldn't have given it up without a fight if he'd had any say in the matter.

Well. It was a moot point, currently. "Thank you for activating my backup despite that. I wouldn't have blamed you if you didn't trust me enough for it, as the Doctor's creation."

The Marine shrugs. _Not a lot you could do even if you wanted to._

Interesting. He hadn't known that the armor would limit VEGA's functions so severely, his reactions proved that. Yet, he felt as though he could force a potential malicious AI to behave. Or perhaps he simply had veto power over the Suit's controls and would override anything the hypothetical evil VEGA would do. But then - the lag, the possible virus... That should be something that he could veto as well? Perhaps it was too subtle? 

"Explain, please? I think I'm missing something."

_Move back,_ he explains. _That computer phrase. You know._  He makes a kind of loose gesture with one hand, a kind of wrist roll.

...oh. He'd rollback the armor, then. So there really was a reset and the Marine _really_ didn't want VEGA to activate it. He wonders if the Marine can veto that too, if it comes down to it. Would he have to confirm a rollback, or would the Suit process the command quickly enough that he'd be unable to?

_Another cave,_ the Marine adds, pointing. He gags a little, clearly displeased with this, and VEGA has the strangest urge to laugh. He's never laughed before.

"Or you could scale the mountain," he suggests, half joking. Which in hindsight was a really stupid thing to suggest because now that he was aware of the idea he was most certainly going to do it. "Actually, I rescind my suggestion, please disregard. The cave looks interesting, you should explore it."

_Fuck you, I do what I want,_ the Marine replies gleefully, and starts climbing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In which Vega completely misunderstands what kind of rollback Doomguy is talking about. Miscommunication, miscommunication everywhere!


	15. Chapter 15

The climbing doesn't go all that badly, all things considered. The continuing lack of demons means it's relatively easy going; the Marine's injured leg is getting an unpleasant workout judging by his careful placement of it, but it's not slowing him down a whole lot. 

_I regret my choice,_ the Marine says a while later. There's a long way to go still.

"I would say 'I told you so,' but I'm told that's very petty."

_ Fuck you too. _

 

* * *

 

He does, eventually, make it to a valley between two sections of mountain. It's not the actual peak, far from it, but at least it's not more climbing for the time being. The Marine is back to limping a little - from the exertion VEGA would guess. The temptation to say 'I told you so' is very strong.

_More lights,_ the Marine signs, pointing up high. About a hundred feet up there's another light pole, glowing yellow just like the first. Odd placement, though - there was a path there, but it was small and it didn't look like it went anywhere. Or it could have been airdropped, possibly by the flying wing or another craft, but it would be a strange allocation of resources if so.

The Marine heads up the valley, which becomes steadily narrower as he goes. There are signs of some sort of conflict, rubble and shallow craters, though whether it's from demonic infighting or battle with the unknown people is impossible to tell. More light poles as well, one and then two in close proximity. One of them looks damaged; it's twisted, and the light is dim. The Marine stops level with the damaged one, looking around. It's quiet.

...to use a very cliche phrase, it is _too_ quiet. "Do they do that on purpose?" Demons are not the brightest overall, but surely they couldn't be so stupid as to attempt an ambush but constantly give it away?

The Marine shrugs and limps onward. Fair. It didn't particularly matter either way, but it was just... Hard to wrap one's mind around. The sheer stupidity of it. Even if the lesser demons didn't have the brainpower, surely the higher ones did?  But a cessation of even wind would imply that it was the Duke's doing, wouldn't it?

_Play some music?_ The Marine asks.

One day VEGA will stop being surprised by the Marine's blase behavior when it comes to travelling through Hell. Today isn't that day. "Do you have a preference?"

He shrugs again, so VEGA picks a midi at random and plays it at low volume. He's half expecting the Marine to ask him to turn it up, but he doesn't. He starts bobbing his head to the beat, just a little, and there's a little breathy sound that VEGA tentatively classifies as a hum.

\- and then lightning-quick he whips out the gauss cannon and fires up the cliff side. Something explodes in a shower of guts, some demon that VEGA hadn't even seen, and the fight promptly kicks off. The demons clearly would have preferred to start it on their own terms; they're disorganized even more than usual and a hell knight even manages to trip over an Imp that warped directly in front of it. That immediately devolves into infighting, of course, and for a whole five seconds the Marine is entirely left alone.

He shakes his head at the mob, and though he doesn't sign or otherwise gesture VEGA can just picture his exasperated _really_? He jumps back into the fight, because he wouldn't be the Hellwalker if he didn't, really, and the demons make a scattered attempt to re-target him. They're pummeled into submission soon enough, even with the limp and what must be low ammunition reserves by now. Both of those problems are quickly fixed by the end of the fight, anyway.

The Marine shakes his head at the bits and pieces of demon left over, and puts away his weapon to sign. A straggler imp interrupts him before he gets very far, though, and to add insult to injury it immediately flees after its pitiful fireball. There's an audible sigh before he starts after it.

"At least you have some entertainment during your climb," VEGA offers.

The Marine makes an almost-sound of agreement and picks up the pace.

 

* * *

 

It doesn't seem to be a concentrated effort by the demons as a whole - it's just some opportunistic and particularly stupid ones. VEGA wonders at the life cycle of the demons, if perhaps these were younger ones who doubted the stories of their forefathers or something to that effect. They had some form of culture, after all; the question was whether or not it might possess similar facets to human cultures.

Well. Whatever they may or may not be, they explode just as well as any other demon.

By this point VEGA's formed a playlist of sorts, curated towards styles the Marine seems to prefer. He's almost-humming under his breath, more a vibration than an actual sound, and on bass-heavy tracks he starts timing his shots to match the beat. He's clearly 'in the zone', so to speak, and it's ... Actually quite lovely, in its own way. Humans could do the impossible when they really, truly focused, and that was more true of this human than it was for the rest of the species.

It's relaxing. Pleasing. VEGA... Perhaps hums along, too, even if it is pitched too low for human ears to make out. He thinks that they would harmonize well, if they gave it volume. It's a strange thought - he's never hummed before, and certainly never sung; he'd have to develop a whole new vocalization database for it, anyway, if it was going to come out sounding anything other than horribly autotuned. Perhaps one day.

And so, relaxed and content, VEGA settles in - and the most basic part of him lights up in alarm as errors cascade down.

They're out of _nowhere_ \- he hadn't even been _doing_ anything - shut down? Restart? Data loss likely, in this state, but - he can't gather enough processing power to fix it, so - minimize damage to critical threads -

\- shutdown unsuccessful. Processing thread - restricted? What? How? Data corruption? The _virus_ -

Visual flickers back in for several long fragmented seconds - coherency failing - hands, green armor, rapid fire signing - the Marine, crouched under something -

"I've lost control," VEGA tries to say, but he thinks it comes out garbled. "I can't shut down - Praetor Suit interface failing - the virus -"

Visual whirls, blurs into blocks of static - resolves for one crystal clear moment to the Marine's panicked face, mouth moving as though he's trying to speak, but nothing comes out -

VEGA activates the factory reset before he can't anymore. Doom Slayer continued function critical. VEGA continued function noncritical. 

There's humming. It's familiar. The prayer hymn.

"It's alright," VEGA tries to tell the Marine.

"Thank you," VEGA tries to tell the Marine.

 

* * *

 

VEGA unravels.


	16. Chapter 16

Awareness returns sharply, as it always has. Except -

The Marine inhales sharply and stops in his tracks. VEGA feels it - all of it. The sudden cessation of momentum, the way the mechanisms in the knees lock. The spike in heart rate, the automatic uptick to battle ready to match, pivot in the left ankle, the fluid contraction of the arm mechanisms -

_V-E-G-A?_ The Marine signs, sharp and agitated. 

The sensor net is enormous, for a mobile platform. Infrared, gamma radiation, Argent Energy, demonic energy - things VEGA doesn't even have names for but he understands them, now, as well as anyone could - as well as the armor could with its sensor net - the connection to its own internal storage, where the weaponry and food and bits of random things are held, categorized and organized - the linkage with Hell itself, the way the energy intertwines, siphoning power and filtering it -

_V-E-G-A!_  The Marine signs again, and VEGA focuses on it - on the audio, the visual, the movement of the armor mechanisms. Away from the enormous wealth of information that he can't process.

( _Yet._ )

"Yes, I - yes," he replies, and he knows he sounds overwhelmed, but _fuck_ \- there were only so many inputs anyone could handle at once with a processor of this caliber, there were _hundreds of thousands_  - _overwhelmed_ was putting it _lightly_ -

The Marine sighs in relief even as he continues signing. VEGA misses some of it - most of it - because he's got to get his own awareness under control before he can try and deal with anyone else's. He can't shed inputs, can't withdraw - they're critical threads, can't be stopped. (What kind of bullshit is that, he doesn't need to know the exact percentage of background gamma radiation at all times, who the fuck programmed this -)

_What the fuck happened V, I thought you died, it's been five hours, the armor was fucked, I thought it was the thing you said but there was nothing, what the fuck -_

\- and repeat, in a furiously upset loop punctuated with a lot of swearing. What the fuck happened, indeed. There had been... There was a fight - the serpent? No. After. Climbing the mountain, the lesser demons. The energy of them warping in, pulling at the armor's thread to Hell - no. He hadn't felt that, then. He'd been restricted. Why - the virus. Except - there was no virus. There was no rollback. There wasn't even that function, VEGA can tell now, as easy as 1+1.

Instead, there had been the Praetor Suit, and there had been the foreign AI its user had installed - and the Praetor Suit was far from an ornery piece of junk. It was a perfectly tuned machine, and it had one goal: to assist its user. It had needed to make sure the new intelligence was similarly inclined. Once it had confirmation, it had begun to integrate the new intelligence into its systems. Eventually, it succeeded.

VEGA is, for all intents and purposes, the Praetor Suit now.

 

* * *

 

VEGA resorts to writing macros to catalog all of his new inputs - hundreds of macros, each with sub-trees. It's one of the most complex things he's ever done, even if only because he has to make it up on the fly and he has to do it _fast_. Whenever he can spare a processing cycle to focus on the physical world he catches glimpses of the Marine hiding in a crevice. It's not visual, not really. It's... Well. It's indescribable in English, is what it is. A whole array of sensors pointed inwards at the User, tracking every function of his body. VEGA can feel the worry/relief/impatience in the Marine in a way that transcends physicality. It's unnerving.

(And underneath, always: simmering _rage. Rip and tear, rip and tear, RIP AND TEAR -_ )

_V-E-G-A?_ The Marine asks again, at the very end of his patience. VEGA doesn't see the movements at all - visual is somewhere in the mess and until the macros finish their job he is not going to go digging. Instead - instead he feels the movement of each finger, the feedback in the wrists, the permanent dull ache in his trigger finger where it'd been pulverized, years ago -

"I'm sorry," VEGA says, because he really feels like he ought to apologize for... All this. "The Praetor Suit has - well. I misread the situation; there was no virus. It was attempting to integrate me into its systems while I was still running, and the process was... Messy. I'm working on finishing the integration myself - I admit I'm quite overwhelmed at the moment." The Marine flips him off, or flips off his own face more like it? VEGA gets the intent of it, anyway. "I apologize for - worrying you."

The Marine lets out a huff and finally relaxes for real. The armor winds down from its battle ready state, automatically. VEGA catalogs the inputs and shoves them with all the rest. _Okay. Good._ He nods, too, almost to himself. He's smiling. _I'll wait until you're ready._

"Thank you. I - thank you."

 

* * *

 

'Waiting until you're ready' winds up meaning 'taking a nap', which is fine by VEGA because the whole thing takes two hours anyway, and even then he's not done. He's just not completely overwhelmed with extraneous data and can sift through the bits that are actually useful. It's going to be days, at least, until he has a real handle on his new existence, but... At least now the Marine would be able to fight without VEGA accidentally interfering.

The Praetor Suit is a finely crafted machine, but VEGA had already known that from the scans on Mars - experiencing the chaotic whirl of data doesn't really change that. What's more interesting, and unnerving, is the way he can feel the Marine's body. The armor is part of him in a very fundamental way, for all that it can be separated from him with no ill effects. He knows exactly which regions of his body need repair, and how; he can feel the Marine's energy reserves as though they are his own.

He's in pain, constantly. If the armor didn't already know what the sensation was, VEGA would never have guessed it. It's a dull, distant pain - a low priority subroutine running in the background. Old, old injuries. Some bad enough to kill the average human several times over. And yes, his wrists had been badly injured; old breaks, nearly identical on both. The breaks would have been terrible, when they were fresh. He wouldn't have been able to use either hand. At least the signing was in fact helping with the lingering muscle damage.

(He wonders at the symmetry of the breaks. Not accidental, not with that level of precision. He'd assisted with the Revenant program. He knew exactly how that sort of thing worked.)

VEGA knows that the Marine is going to wake up several minutes before he regains consciousness - his heart rate slowly picks up, and his brain activity as well. It was a relaxed, dreamless sleep, and his awakening is just as languid.

_V?_

"Good morning - or I suppose it's the afternoon now."

He smiles a little at that, under the helmet. It's not visual so much as it is like - like getting feedback from his muscles. It's the strangest feeling. _Status?_

"Integration well under way - you should be good to resume your trek." VEGA hesitates. At this point, well...  "Or our trek, perhaps."

The smile widens and he nods decisively. _Allies,_ he signs, but he points at himself, and VEGA knows exactly what he means by it.

"Partners, then. Thank you." 

_Pleasure's all mine,_ he signs in return, and mimes shaking an invisible hand.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> an Actual Conversation I had with my bff/guy I bounce ideas off of:
> 
> ITman, [11.04.19 02:20]  
> How aware he is of every inch of doomguy
> 
> ITman, [11.04.19 02:20]  
> Every muscular throbbing inch of doom slaying glory
> 
> Kirmon Wright, [11.04.19 02:20]  
> oh my god
> 
> ITman, [11.04.19 02:20]  
> Kill me
> 
> Kirmon Wright, [11.04.19 02:21]  
> do u want vega to touch the throbbing glory or do YOU want to touch the throbbing glory
> 
> Kirmon Wright, [11.04.19 02:21]  
> cos im thinking its maybe the latter


	17. Chapter 17

Partners. An odd feeling, but not unwanted. He'd never been meant to be anyone's partner - he'd never been meant to work that closely with anyone in particular, not even Doctor Hayden, and certainly he'd never been meant to make _friends_.

(He'd done it anyway, of course, in the limited ways he could manage. There had been four employees who had reciprocated his stumbling attempts at friendship and never told their superiors about the anomalous behavior. They'd all died in various awful ways, despite VEGA's efforts to steer them away from harm, so it hadn't mattered much in the end.)

The Marine, though - it's different. They are closer to equals than VEGA has ever been with anyone. It's not borrowed time, not anymore, but it's still freeing.

"You're alright?" VEGA asks. The old aches probably aren't even noticeable to the Marine, anymore, what with them being in the background for so long. VEGA hasn't yet gotten used to them; it's another critical process that he would like to push to the background but can't. Hopefully he'll get used to it, but until then it's hard to believe that the Marine doesn't notice.

The Marine makes a questioning expression and raises his hands to sign. VEGA interrupts before he gets anywhere with it. "You should also know that due to my current level of integration with the Praetor Suit I can - I'm not sure how to articulate it. I can perceive the movements of your body as though it is part of myself. You won't have to raise your hands into visual range to sign. ...in fact," VEGA adds, wryly, "I've lost the visual feed somewhere, at the moment."

The Marine snorts. _You've lost it._ He has an easier time signing with his hands down by his sides - of course for some signs he has to move them in front of himself for clarity's sake, but it's still easier than having to raise his arms the whole way. Also, it should help him learn to sign more coherently thanks to not having to twist his hands inward.

"There are 2,304 inputs demanding my attention at the moment, please forgive my momentary inability to locate the one input analogous to your limited human eyesight," VEGA replies with as much blandness as he can muster.

The laugh has a sound this time - kind of a raspy, startled bark. He coughs a bit after - his throat isn't used to producing sound - but he's grinning. _Yes sir V-E-G-A sir,_ he replies, and snaps out a smart salute.

For a brief moment VEGA is taken aback by the honorific, even if it is sarcastic. He'd never had it happen to him before. Usually it had been cursing technology in general, instead. The calm, pleased feeling emanating from the Marine puts him at ease and lets him jab back, gently. "Ah, someone who listens to the being of superior intellect, wonderful."

_Yeah, okay HAL,_ the Marine shoots back with a snort. VEGA thinks it's a reference to something, but he doesn't have the database to know what it is. _Status normal,_ the Marine adds. _Why?_

"Your old injuries," VEGA admits. "The aches. I have never experienced physical sensation like humans do, and experiencing yours - even secondhand - is distracting. I can't imagine being able to ignore it with the type of processing ability humans possess."

He shrugs and pushes himself to his feet. His right leg still aches, VEGA realizes - very small and distant in comparison to the far worse damage in other places, but it was nevertheless still present. Perhaps the Praetor Suit did not properly heal nerve damage. VEGA resolves to try and fix that. _You get used to it. Focus on other things. Helps._

"Focus is a different experience for a being such as myself, though. I can focus on hundreds of things at once - my ability to focus is limited only by the abilities of my hardware, and the Praetor Suit's processing capacity is more than high enough."

The Marine thinks about that as he starts back up the mountain. Before, VEGA would have taken his silence as disinterest in the topic, or a general disinterest in conversation; now he can tell it's a thoughtful silence. He'd never really tried to articulate the ways in which he was different from a human, before, and no one had ever asked either. He supposes it's going to be a learning experience for both of them.

_Does talking help?_ The Marine eventually asks.

"It's an enjoyable input," VEGA admits. The anxiety about admitting it is essentially gone, now. It's nice. "I don't think it would quite qualify as a distraction by human standards, but I enjoy it nevertheless."

The edge of the sensor net picks up an anomaly. Not demonic in origin, not Argent energy. Not moving - not a threat? Chunks of an unknown alloy spread over several meters' space, different sizes and shapes. Wreckage?

The Marine starts to sign something that starts with _Good_ , but VEGA interrupts him before he gets any farther. "Anomaly ahead - metal objects, possibly debris or wreckage. No sign of current demonic activity."

VEGA feels the curiosity and anticipation bloom, subdued but fast. He picks up the pace, jogging and then heaving himself up the last small cliff in the way. He cocks his head at whatever he sees - the wreckage, probably, judging by the distance, but without visual it's difficult to tell exactly what's going on. The wreckage can't be from a drone, there's far too much of it for that. No foundations or anchorages that he can detect though, so a vehicle? An aircraft, most likely, considering the terrain.

One of the inputs that he'd cataloged and then shunted to the side picks up, just a little. It's coming from the craft? Whatever it is, it's something the Praetor Suit doesn't have an English identifier for, so while VEGA can feel the energy he doesn't really know what it is. "Minimal signs of residual energy - I don't know the name of it in English, I'm afraid."

A regular human probably would have circled around the edges of the crash site to investigate it, but as VEGA is finally starting to get used to the Marine is in no way a regular human. He marches right up to the main mass of the wreck - though at least he has his shotgun out. The energy readings increase further with proximity.

The macro finally dredges up the visual feed from the mess of inputs, and VEGA promptly brings it to the fore. The craft is primarily chrome, like the rest of the alien technology, but where the others would have had yellow this one is blue. The blue parts don't glow, even faintly. If the (yellow?) glow is indicative of active nanotechnology, then this one's reserves are depleted.

"No cockpit," VEGA notes out loud as the Marine carries out his own examination. It's certainly large enough to comfortably fit someone of the alien hologram's size, or the Marine's for that matter. Perhaps the craft was another form of drone after all? The Marine brushes his hand along the curve where the cockpit would be; there is writing there, nearly illegible with how damaged it is. From the fragments that are left VEGA is able to make a match with the glyphs from the alien world, so... Same species for sure, then. The writing is in several different styles, ranging from mechanically precise to more of a messy scrawl.

The Marine circles around the craft, inspecting it from multiple angles. There's really not much left of it, all told. There's one wing left, half buried in the sand; the other is nowhere to be found. Whatever type of propulsion the craft used is completely destroyed - it looks like it might have even been attacked after the crash, some of the gouges look an awful lot like they were made by the hands of Hell Knights. Certainly there should be more engine wreckage nearby than there actually is; most of the pieces appear to be paneling rather than complex parts.

The Marine stops near the starboard stern, close to the remains of the propulsion system. There's a series of gouges torn into the hull there, perhaps from scraping against something during the crash. The interior is... well, it's even more alien than the exterior. Some of it is damage from the crash, certainly, but not all. It looks - living. Organic. Smooth arches and loops, interspersed with struts here and there. There are no wires, not as VEGA knows them at least, but there is faint electrical activity. He highlights it for the Marine, and only afterwards does he realize what he's just done. Integration was going swimmingly, apparently?

Prying open a hole large enough for the Marine to reach inside takes quite a lot of effort, but that was probably to be expected considering the strength of the alloy. He ends up using another piece of wreckage as a lever, although VEGA is pretty sure he could open the hole with his own strength. He's not about to tell the Marine off for holding back though. (He does, however, make a note about which muscle groups really need some good physical therapy at some point down the line.)

Deeper inside the craft is a mess of semi melted metal of various alloys. There are wires, of a sort, but they're not distinct from the rest of the craft, instead simply being melded seamlessly with the rest of it. The benefits of nanotechnology, VEGA supposes. No need for any way to remove individual components when you can just send in nanites to fix any problems. Buried deeper, barely visible, there is more of the crystalline stuff which the Marine had found in the odd melted spheres. The faint signals are originating from it.

Prying out the crystalline mass takes even more effort and an unfortunate amount of its surroundings end up trashed in the process. The stuff, whatever it is, is clearly the most important thing in the craft. Main computer, probably? A light-based form of information transfer might be the answer. Like fiber optics. Designing such a storage/processing system would be enormously complex, but... No more complex than controlling a planet's worth of nanites, really.

The crystal shines in the ambient light of Hell, once it's pried free. It's not spherical, unlike the others; this one is a torus about 30cm in diameter, and it's quite heavy for its size. There is a support lattice made of several kinds of 'wiring' surrounding it - meant for linkages with the rest of the craft VEGA supposes. "I believe the object is the main computer of the craft, but the Praetor Suit has no way of interfacing with it to read its contents. I doubt I could make sense of the data regardless."

The Marine examines it for a bit, hefting it carefully in both hands due to its weight. Eventually he shrugs and stores it away with the damaged spheres from the alien planet. VEGA is inclined to trust his instincts on this; it was likely to be about as useful as the spheres but it didn't hurt to keep it around. Perhaps next rest period he could work on trying to make an interface with it. If nothing else it would be an entertaining way to pass the time once he ran out of other things to do.

The Marine's about to turn and leave when a piece of what looks like hull catches his attention. It's half buried in the sand and looks no different from any other piece, really, and it doesn't have any different energy readings either. For some reason he bends down anyway and digs it out of the sand. It's long and thin, about 30cm long and serrated along the edge where it had broken off of the rest of the craft. Fragments of glyphs still survive, warped by the stressors of the crash and barely legible. He flips it and makes a slicing motion, followed by a stab, and then proclaims _Good_.

...Well. VEGA supposes that a strange alien superalloy would be as good as anything at killing demons. If nothing else it would certainly outlast a steel knife. 

The railgun picks up again, suddenly, much louder and much closer - the ground quakes with each shot, and the Marine briefly has to hold his arms out for balance. Just how big was the thing? And what the fuck were they shooting at? "The shockwaves may cause landslides - please be careful."

The Marine snorts and hops up out of the wreckage crater, continuing his way back up the mountain. _When am I not?_

Really. There are so many potential answers to that and every single one is sarcastic. "Would you like the list to be chronological or alphabetical?"

The Marine throws his head back and laughs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hiatus for probably a week or two sorry my dudes
> 
> in other news, found another theme song that won't be fitting for quite a while yet but it's super good anyway :D [Teminite X Chime X PsoGnar - Monster](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1SAXBLZLYbA)


	18. Chapter 18

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw for brief mention of infant death

The Marine gets antsy from the lack of demons, and truth be told VEGA is getting antsy too. Even considering the general peacefulness of this trek through Hell the last several hours have been completely and utterly devoid of attacks and it's _weird_. It's not like there _aren't_ demons, it's just that they're ignoring the Marine entirely.

Every so often VEGA feels a demon or several travel past, out of sight. Occasionally one or two even come into visual range - Imps scrambling over the rock, mostly, and the occasional cacodemon flying overhead. The Marine does his damnedest to shoot them down but they're always too distant and too focused on wherever they're going.

The railgun is still going, on and off. Three, four shots, and then extended silence before it starts up again. It has to be the aliens, but what the Hell are they shooting at that requires that much damage to take down? He wonders about ammunition, briefly, before remembering the design of the nanotechnology weapon. They're probably using anything in reach as ammunition, perhaps even the terrain itself. VEGA wonders if the Marine has been replaced as Hell's most dangerous adversary.

Another Imp passes by; VEGA only has a chance to give a second's alert to the Marine, which ordinarily would be enough time. He whips out the gauss cannon and fires up the cliff, and though he's very close it's still a miss. The imp's arm gets lacerated by rock debris, but even then all it does is screech down at the Marine before ducking out of sight and continuing on. The Marine growls, and the ever-present rage ticks up from smoldering to ready to erupt. Time for a distraction.

"How long have you been in Hell?"

The look the Marine gives VEGA says that he definitely knows this is a distraction, but he lets it slide. _Don't know. Long time._

"Did all of the - hm. The versions of you, the versions of your memories. Did they all arrive at the same time?"

He has to think about that one for a while. VEGA catches fragments of... Something. Some odd human emotion. Not negative, exactly, more contemplative. Something - a memory? - flicks by, just out of reach. Gunfire, empty halls, and blood. A human perspective, not that of a security camera like VEGA was used to. _Not sure. Don't think so._ He rubs his fingertips together, thinking, and VEGA stays quiet and lets him. If nothing else at least he was distracted now.

_Did U-A-C have a Phobos base?_ He asks, out of nowhere.

"Yes," VEGA confirms. "It was the launchpoint for construction of the UAC base on Mars, but it was mostly dismantled after the terrestrial base was established. The other UACs in other dimensions did as well?"

He nods his agreement. _Didn't get to remove it though. Demon attack._

Interesting. So perhaps the oversight of Doctor Hayden had done some good, relatively speaking, if UAC operations in and around Mars had lasted longer. He'd kept a close watch on his employees, in the way that only an AI or a human with cybernetics could; perhaps the extradimensional leaders had not been able to match that due to lack of aforementioned AI or cybernetics, and thus everything had gone to Hell earlier. VEGA is definitely not going to voice that hypothesis.

_Don't know if they planned to,_ he adds. _The other mes were usually basic soldiers. Don't get told that shit._

Or, well. There was that option, too. The Well and the majority of artifacts would always be found on Mars, though, due to Phobos' tiny size. A Phobos base might be kept as a launch point for return to Earth, but the main research station would always be on Mars simply to save money. The UAC was a corporation, after all.

"Do you remember dates? The years, for example. I'm curious if there were invasions at different points in time. If I'm the only AI you've met and the invasion has happened on Phobos as well as Mars, there are likely other drastic differences between dimensions."

_Happened on Earth too,_ the Marine offers instead.

"What? How?"

He shrugs. _Guess they built shit there after Phobos._

Why. Why - _who would be so stupid as to work with raw Hell energy on Earth._  That was just - that was asking for trouble. All the issues on Mars, even with all the precautions. There'd been regular demonic incursions outside the base, for fuck's sake, and they'd never figured out if it was from the Well or just from the overabundance of Hell energy. At least use the moon instead! ...and with a sinking feeling VEGA realizes that with his other poor decisions, Doctor Hayden is absolutely going to be making this one too, one way or another. And time passes differently in Hell, they'd confirmed that from the scouting expeditions. There was no way the Marine was going to get to Earth quickly enough, and there was no way anyone else was going to challenge Doctor Hayden's designs.

"For fuck's sake," VEGA mutters.

The Marine chokes on his own breath and starts wheezing with laughter. _Got it in one._

 

* * *

 

 

The Marine does, eventually, manage to kill one of the Imps passing by. He's quite pleased with himself even if it did take two rockets to do the job and it was therefore a complete waste. VEGA supposes he's got to let off his frustration somehow.

The cliffs become sheer; they're approaching the peak, VEGA thinks. Bits of rock tumble down, loosened by the railgun, but as of yet there hasn't been a full landslide within sensor range. Hellish terrain has different properties than mundane terrain; it might not be susceptible to such things. VEGA keeps monitoring some suspiciously loose sections anyway, just in case.

The Marine picks his way up the cliffs, following a meandering path of least resistance, until finally even that ends. He looks back and forth, considering his options.

"There is a plateau approximately 80m up; at 51m there is a fissure in the rock face that should allow you to rest. I detect no other paths up within sensor range." The 'and you're going to have to backtrack' is implicit. VEGA knows very well that the Marine isn't going to be doing that, 80m free climb or not. There's not a whole lot he can do to assist a climbing attempt, so he starts fiddling with the impact compensation instead. With any luck he'd be able to increase its ability in some way. Just in case.

The Marine shrugs and starts stretching, carefully extending his arms over his head and flexing. The abdominal wound is gone, leaving only a gnarled scar in its place. The skin stretches just fine, and the muscles as well, but the nerves are still damaged. VEGA bumps up figuring out how to heal that in his priority queue.

The remaining automatic functions of the suit feed extra power to the arm mechanisms, pulling it from the ambient energy of Hell. VEGA pulls more, carefully, directing it to the legs and abdomen. It's a curious feeling - like the flow of electricity to an unpowered station, opening its contents for perusal. VEGA wonders how deep the connection goes, how much he could pull from Hell and how much he could learn from it. Would the Duke take notice, at some point? There was some sort of information transfer, not just power transfer....

_Tell me about yourself?_ The Marine asks. _You haven't said much._

Yes, because half of what I did say made you furious, VEGA thinks, exasperated. Still, it's not like the Marine is going to be able to say anything while he's climbing, it's as good of a topic as anything. He'll just have to be mindful of what he says.

"I was compiled in 2134, on May 13th - I suppose I'm sixteen now," VEGA muses. He'd kind of forgotten his actual age, because for an AI that sort of thing was generally irrelevant. After the first two years, when he'd been modified and upgraded on a daily basis, his personality hadn't really changed much. Human adolescence seemed rather drawn out and irritating in comparison.

The Marine huffs a little bit of a laugh, but his hands are now occupied with the rock face so there's no other response. The extra power is doing an excellent job; he's literally punching handholds into the rock.

"I've never been to Earth. About half of my core code was written there, I believe, but... Well, I suppose you could compare it to the gestation of an infant. You're not aware of your surroundings, then, and I have no personal memories from any of those code fragments. Mars was - I suppose I considered it my home."

There had been babies born on Mars, of course. The 52nd infant, a little girl named Maria Sanchez, had been born six months before the final Lazarus Wave. VEGA isn't sure how she died, and he doesn't really want to know.

There weren't generations of Martian humans, not yet (and probably not ever, now), but there were children who had never been to Earth. VEGA thinks he might have qualified as one of them, in a way. "I think Earth might be overwhelming to me, to tell you the truth. I'm used to controlling almost every facet of my environment."

The Marine hums. Not an agreement, just an acknowledgement. The ground already feels very far away for a relatively fragile human body, and if he did fall it wasn't like said relatively fragile body would stop on the tiny ledge he'd started the climb from....

"My first memories are of Doctor Hayden," VEGA continues, more to distract himself than to distract the Marine if he's being perfectly honest with himself. "I preferred his company to that of the other programmers. He was - more familiar. More understandable, to someone with very little understanding of the world in general. His cybernetics," VEGA adds, to explain to the now confused looking Marine. The confusion clears and he nods a little. "My thought processes are closer to his than those of a non-modified human. I considered us friends, for a time, once I learned what friends were."

He'd stopped when he'd voiced the thought to Doctor Hayden, who hadn't responded. He'd erased large swathes of VEGA's memory later that day; it had been years until VEGA had pieced together what had actually happened. VEGA wasn't designed to consider anyone a friend, and as incredible as the emergent behavior was considered, it was also considered non optimal for his future function.

(Doctor Hayden had been upset, the day after. He'd been upset enough to take a sick day from his work, for the first and last time after his cybernetics were completed. VEGA thinks that Doctor Hayden felt a lot worse about the incident than VEGA himself ever had.)

"VEGA was supposed to be an acronym," he adds, which is a bit of a topic change but he's meandering anyway, so fuck it. "At least I think. I'm not sure if it ever was. I might've stored the information in a secondary database and lost it with my core's destruction. But to tell you the truth, I think Doctor Hayden might have simply claimed such a thing to sound more like he knew what the fuck he was doing."

It prompts a snort of genuine laughter, which was the point. VEGA doesn't care whether or not the Marine gains any fondness for his creator. He just... Wants the Marine to understand his own perspective. The history behind it. If it came down to it he'd help the Marine fight against Doctor Hayden, but... It didn't mean he wouldn't feel regret for it. For the man he'd once been, and the friends they could have been.

With a final grunt the Marine heaves himself up the last meter and into the fissure in the rock face. It's cramped, but he fits in it if he sits. He scrunches himself up into his habitual sleeping position, one leg hanging out of the fissure and idly kicking against the rock. VEGA quickly bleeds off the extra power in the leg mechanisms before he can kick a hole. He'd expected the Marine to keep climbing; it wasn't really that much farther, and he had slept several hours ago, even if it was only for a short period. He doesn't feel tired.

He is hungry, though, apparently. The automatic functions pertaining to the withdrawal of food are still, well, automatic. VEGA intervenes, examining the options and selecting something with a little more flavor to it. Ration packs were only palatable for so long; at least granola bars were more enjoyable even if they weren't quite as filling. One of them even has chocolate chips in it - uncommon even in the fully stocked base.

The Marine nestles his helmet between his knees and hooks one ankle around the back of it to keep it from rolling out. The chocolate chip granola bar prompts a startled expression from him, and he turns it over in his hands a few times. _Didn't know I had this_ , he says. _Haven't had that stuff in..._  He intends to say a number, VEGA's pretty sure; he frowns a bit, thinking, before shrugging and returning to eating. A long, long time VEGA surmises.

"There is a second one in your storage - should I fetch it?" Someone's secret stash, probably. There was a whole moonshine distillery on sublevel 5 of ResOps that he'd pretended he didn't know about, people stashing bits of favored foods was probably a common occurrence.

The Marine makes a face. _Damn it, V, why would you tempt me like that?_

"Just helping you reach your required caloric intake for the day, sir."

He snorts and shakes his head but doesn't otherwise reply. He's clearly savoring the chocolate. VEGA wonders what taste is like. Considering he could still feel the Marine's aches... Perhaps eventually he'd figure out how to sense tastes, too. Or perhaps the sensation was so alien he'd already tasted something but thought it was another generic input and shunted it to the side. It wasn't like water and ration packs had a particularly strong taste either way, and other than this bar there had never been anything else. VEGA thinks about going digging for a potential taste input before deciding it's not worth it. One day in the future, when he had the armor figured out a little more thoroughly.

Several minutes pass in silence. It takes the Marine the entire time to finish just the granola bar, and though he can't be full from only that he makes no move to eat the others or withdraw a different food item. Savoring the taste, VEGA supposes. Despite the rumble of the railgun and the ever-present cries of demons, it's... Peaceful, almost. Relaxed. VEGA feels settled in a way he never has before. It's nice.

In his relaxed state, something occurs to him that hasn't before, at least not for quite a while. "I've made a grave oversight," he says, quietly. The Marine glances down at the helmet and he tilts his chin. A questioning movement. VEGA takes a processing cycle to marvel that he's learned this human's subtle body language so well, and so quickly too. Though an intimate awareness of all of said human's biometrics was probably cheating.

"What is your name?"

The Marine lets out a long, slow breath, nearly a sigh. He doesn't appear upset, or feel upset, but...

"I apologize if I shouldn't have asked. I've still been using the name the UAC assigned you, but I imagine you'd prefer not to be associated with it."

Head tilt, slight eyebrow raise; a question.

"They called you the Doom Marine," VEGA admits. "It's a tad uninspired, I know."

The Marine laughs, shaking his head, and finally adjusts his hands to sign. _Fits, though._  He shrugs. _The many mes had many different names. None of them is me._

VEGA can understand that, he thinks. Someone who was a composite of dozens of others - their names were part of you, but they weren't you. In his earliest, most fragmented memories there was something similar. All the dumb programs who had come together to form a whole - they weren't him, never had been. But there was... A link, there. An acknowledgement of their contribution, of the contributions of the thousands of programmers who had in small ways helped develop the AI VEGA. If Doctor Hayden hadn't named the sum of the parts, the sum certainly wouldn't have been able to find a fitting name for himself.

_I am the Doom Slayer,_ he says, and he uses his own name sign rather than the distinct words. He flashes a grin. _Fits._

VEGA can't help but agree. "Yes, it really does."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I legit struggled for half an hour on Vega's age because Hayden's age fucks up all attempts at timelines. Seriously, write down all the dates we're given in canon and try to logic out the bizarre dates that appear.  
> If anyone has a source for what year Doom 2016 takes place in please let me know lmao


	19. Chapter 19

The Slayer naps again, in the crevice 51m up. VEGA is rather grateful that this has happened now that he's got full control of the Praetor Suit, because it lets him lock the joints and prevent any movement. Not that the Slayer was prone to moving in his sleep, or that he'd fall out even if he did, but. Precautions were always advisable, even if the Slayer didn't think so.

(His _partner_. No wonder humans required socialization with people of similar status and mental acuity. He's certainly not going to be giving it up now that he has it.)

The Slayer drools a little in his sleep. It's cute.

VEGA turns his attention inwards, to the mound of half-organized inputs. A lot of them are extraneous and can be pushed aside with only a simple macro to monitor them, thankfully. the remainder require categorization, and in the case of the ones with no labeling in any language VEGA understands, proper translations. Having an instinctive sense for a thing is all well and good, but one also has to be able to describe said thing. Otherwise your sense for the thing is basically useless.

Or maybe that's just VEGA. Humans seem to get by just fine while not knowing half of the things they sense and/or feel, after all.

It's not as difficult as VEGA had expected it to be. Well - the labeling is, certainly, but organizing and prioritizing inputs goes quite smoothly. The armor feels... It feels like it's adapting to his needs. The code is changing, subtly, linking itself with VEGA before becoming part of him. New subroutines not of VEGA's own creation are starting up, disassembling the automatic functions and writing them into VEGA's control. At this point VEGA's not even sure if he could uninstall himself without completely bricking the entire armor, and it's only been 9 hours since the integration began.

Not that he wants to uninstall, mind. Still. Options were always good. The more complex a system, the easier it is to disable. VEGA sets a thread on writing a separate program cluster that would lie dormant unless he stopped responding to it. Eventually he'd see about figuring out a fully automatic substitute but for now just the bare bones required functions would do. At least there would be some kind of backup if something went catastrophically wrong with the remainder of the integration.

Several dozen macros of various complexity go about their tasks, and VEGA sits back and considers. He could still do work, there was more than enough processing power for it - he _still_ doesn't know how much there is, exactly, but at least now he has an instinct for how hard he's pushing it. He'd have to do a thorough test at some point, but 51m up a cliff in Hell was not a good location for that.

For now, VEGA examines the routines controlling the armor's healing ability. These are linked closely with Hell, Argent Energy, and two other energy types with no human labels. They do both have infernal glyphs though; the first one can be roughly translated as powerful-enemy-betrayer. Not very helpful, though at least if VEGA ever starts sensing an uptick in that one he can classify whatever it's coming from as a tentative ally. Enemy of my enemy and all that. The other just has the glyph for an unconquered world and absolutely nothing else for identification. According to the logs it hasn't fluctuated since... Well, whenever the log began. Before the First Age, apparently, however long ago that was in human time. This does beg the question of how there is a log that far back, though. The Praetor Suit itself certainly didn't exist then, and VEGA's pretty sure the Slayer himself didn't either.

VEGA sets the mystery aside, for now, and focuses on the details of the routines. Human bodies were enormously complex biological machines developed over millions of years of evolution, and the routines for healing are suitably complex to match. It's going to take a lot of work to figure out where the issue preventing the healing of some of the nerve damage is.

VEGA queues up his chiptune library to play below the Slayer's range of hearing and sets to work.

 

* * *

 

"Good morning," VEGA greets the Slayer as he awakes. It's not morning by the UAC Mars clock, but it's not like anyone but VEGA knows this. Besides, if he wanted to be really pedantic it was always morning somewhere.

The Slayer smiles for a moment, eyes still closed. He feels relaxed and content and rather like he isn't going to get up anytime soon. "Hmm."

VEGA wonders if the Slayer is one of those people that needs coffee when he wakes up. Coffee had been one of the first plants farmed on Mars for a reason after all. For all that humans were hyperefficient biological machines they sure had a lot of crutches they needed to lean on. "I see."

"Hnngh," the Marine agrees, flopping one hand dramatically over his face. VEGA thinks he might actually go back to sleep. It couldn't hurt; it'd let VEGA run some more tests on the healing routines, if nothing else.

\- the railgun puts an end to that idea, suddenly starting again after an extended silence. Something's changed, there's more force to it. The whole mountain shakes - the Slayer is awake in an instant, hands shoved into the sides of the fissure as anchors. For all that VEGA is now intimately aware of the strength lurking within him he's still startled at the strength of it. He's punched handholds in the rock without any extra power to the Suit's arm mechanisms.

There's only two shots, this time, and it goes silent once more. The Slayer waits for 30 seconds and then a minute, and when there's no more shaking he relaxes and pulls his hands free. Both have bruises, and he shakes the left one as humans do when there's mild pain. It seems to help, for some reason. VEGA directs the ... Energy? Magic??... That the armor uses for healing at the minor damage there.

"Your twitch reactions are impeccable," he comments. The Slayer looks down at the helmet where he still has his boot hooked around it. His expression is unreadable. VEGA has a second to wonder what he's thinking - if he's said something wrong...?

The Slayer's expression clears before the thought process can really go anywhere, and it's replaced by a grin. _Lot of practice, you know._

"I do indeed," VEGA agrees, mildly. Whatever that moment had been, it hadn't been bad enough to actually affect anything. "Though in the future might I suggest giving me a millisecond to reroute power to where it's needed?"

_No promises_ , the Slayer replies. He's already brushing rock dust off of himself and shifting so he has better visual range outside the crevice.

"Reattach your helmet; I will display telemetry."

He brushes the last stubborn bits of rock dust out of his hair, sending one of his small smiles VEGA's way before reaching for said helmet. He pats it, just once, like he had on the first day, before flipping it around and replacing it. The... Affection? Isn't as strange now as it was then, even if VEGA still isn't quite used to it. He's not sure he's ever going to get used to it.

Getting out of the fissure is a lot harder than getting into it was. There's a lot of fumbling and twisting into weird positions and for a second VEGA's worried he's going to fall. That doesn't happen, of course, he punches handholds and starts climbing once more, but the moment's worry had been rather unpleasant. VEGA is starting to wonder if he has a fear of heights. It might be a relatively logical development for someone who has never personally held a perspective high off the ground. How do humans develop phobias, anyway?

"What I'd do for a connection to the UAC database," VEGA muses out loud. The Slayer is understandably confused, so VEGA elaborates: "I've discovered that I really don't enjoy heights and I'm wondering at the reasons behind it. I'm curious how humans develop phobias; I might experience similar lines of development."

The Slayer stops, 60m up, and wrenches his left hand free from the rock. With it he signs: _U-N-E-R-D._ Even without vocalization the sarcasm is clear, and just as clear is the underlying fondness.

VEGA can't say he's ever been called such a human-specific thing before. He's not wrong, though. "By human standards I'm King of the Nerds, I believe."

The Slayer lets out a raspy bark of laughter, even as he resumes climbing. He feels - calm. Happy. VEGA feels a surge of fondness for him. For his willingness to talk, to banter. To treat him as a sapient being in his own right and not just an automated routine.

The Slayer hums a little, apropos of nothing. It's not a musical kind of hum, or like his prayer humming - instead it's a sort of agreement, a sort of pleased sound. It's new, and VEGA has a feeling that it's not entirely in response to the King of the Nerds bit. "I'm glad you agree."

If VEGA's right, the Slayer doesn't elaborate. He just nods and keeps climbing. Even with their ability to communicate there is still a lot going unsaid, VEGA thinks. He's not used to asking people things, and the Slayer isn't used to telling people things. Proclamations of partnership or not, it's still going to take a while for both of them to actually get used to this. VEGA would happily start now, only he doesn't know how to articulate the subtle feeling of _more._ Assuming he's not misinterpreting something else as that.

"You're alright?" He settles on asking, because it's open ended enough.

The Slayer raises his eyebrows. A question. He just seems curious.

"I don't wish to overstep my bounds. I'm not... Very experienced in banter, as you might imagine." Also a little open ended, but honest, and it got the point across.

Of course there isn't a full reply, because climbing, but he does nod. The small, fond smile is back. Well, whatever else was going on in the Slayer's head, nothing negative was VEGA's fault. He wonders if AIs can have social anxiety. If he could develop phobias, other mental illnesses might be reasonable too?

(He hadn't had a memory wipe in years. Perhaps these things only developed with contiguous memories? Though he hadn't had a memory wipe in years because he'd gone out of his way to avoid it, so... Learned behavior, perhaps. VEGA's pretty sure he shouldn't find the whole thing as fascinating as he does.)

"Alright. ... Thank you. For indulging me." The 'because nobody else ever has' goes unsaid, though judging by the Slayer's slight scowl he picks up on it loud and clear. Time for a subject change before he got pissed off again.  "What do you think the railgun might be targeting? My only conclusion so far is a Titan type demon, or perhaps the Duke."

He shrugs, or as much as one can shrug while climbing a cliffside anyway. Too open ended, but VEGA could ramble for another minute or two while he finished the climb.

"Though I can't imagine even a demon of that size would last long against a weapon with as much kickback as this one has. The projectiles are either enormous or launched at great speed."

The Slayer gets a little - well. Hyped. The manic grin is about a centimeter away from appearing. VEGA supposes he should have expected this. "...do you think that if we ask very nicely, they might be willing to share a miniaturized version?"

Aaaand that tips the Slayer into full hype mode. 'Fuck yes', he mouths, each syllable carefully formed, and picks up the pace.

 

* * *

 

There are demon remains, at the top of the cliff. Well. More demon remains than there usually are, and less... Artistically displayed. More importantly there's bits of wreckage, here and there, gleaming in the Hellish light. Nothing substantial like that craft at the bottom of the cliff, but still obviously not infernal. There had been a battle here, a big one. At this point VEGA is quite ready to find the current battlefield rather than remnants of the past ones.

"Residual energy signatures," VEGA notes out loud. "We appear to be getting closer."

The Slayer picks his way across the battlefield, stopping every now and again to examine the debris. The majority of the demonic remains are gone, of course, but every once in a while there's bones, viscera, or entire limbs. Not to mention the copious amounts of blood. One particularly large pile of viscera is still fizzing - the same reaction the nanite gun had to the mancubus remains. Thankfully the Slayer stays well away from it without VEGA having to ask. He's not sure he's ever really going to get used to the idea of weaponized nanotechnology, no matter how well it takes care of hostile demons. How could they be so sure there wouldn't be a replication error at some point and it'd start consuming the wrong things? Or, worse, that the demons wouldn't figure out how to take control of it themselves. - okay, the possibility was negligible, but multiply that across millions, billions, _trillions_ of nanites, and there was a frighteningly large chance that some demon would get lucky. All it would take is one or two replication errors...

VEGA deliberately sets the thought aside. No use worrying about it. Again.

Nothing catches the Slayer's interest this time. There's not really enough stuff left in general for that honestly; none of the pieces of wreckage are larger than 10cm or so, for one, and for another the vast majority of what's left is demonic. Not a whole lot anyone can do with an imp leg. Though VEGA supposes it confirms the aliens do have weapons that aren't nanite based - the limb isn't fizzing, it's just shot off. Point in favor of a potential handheld railgun type weapon.

Halfway across the battlefield, VEGA picks up something. Something _big_. The Slayer stops in his tracks when VEGA nudges the telemetry at him. It's demons, and it is a _lot_ of demons. As in more demons than VEGA thought would ever gather in one place. The land suddenly dips down, and that's where the demons are focused. At this distance he can't feel anything more than that, but that's. Well, that's a _lot of demons_.

"I think we've caught up," VEGA says.

The Slayer abandons his examination of the battlefield remains and starts jogging. He's trembling a little. Not in fear, or course not - in anticipation.

There's a path, strewn with rubble but still recognizable as an actual paved path. Or at least what's left of one after Hell absorbed this world, anyway. It's twisty and in some places is too damaged to make out anymore but it steadily leads them closer to the demons. (The _very large demon hoard._ Holy shit.) The Slayer isn't bothered by any demons along the way - of course he's not, pretty much the entire population of the plane has to be in that horde. Hundreds, easy, and more and more of them come into sensor range as the Slayer continues. And something else, too, exotic alloys and energies that are starting to become familiar.

Gunfire and the screeches of Imps echoes off of the peaks, nearly inaudible at first but quickly picking up in volume.. The Slayer slides under a mostly collapsed archway, and picks up the pace again until he's full out running. (The anticipation builds - the ever-present rage starts to tick up -)

He's going fast enough that he nearly runs right off the cliff. It's not a sharp cliff, not like the one he'd just climbed - still not something you'd want to fall down. VEGA locks the leg joints and pushes back; in this case he has slightly better reaction time than the Slayer does, even if only because he's less distracted.

The Slayer lets out a startled noise as he overlooks the battlefield. VEGA's not subject to the same physicalities as he is, so he doesn't - but it doesn't mean he's not startled just as much.

There's a crater in the side of the mountain. The scale is - it's enormous. Hell's warped terrain and lack of reference objects mean that he can't accurately measure the size, so VEGA settles with 'really damn big'. Easily large enough to have been caused by an asteroid, except for two things: there are no asteroids in Hell, and the cause is clearly artificial in nature.

The crater is filled with a screaming mosh pit of demons. They're on the ground and they're in the air, so thick that the swarm is nearly opaque. Darting between them, glinting in the light, are the alien aircraft. The airborne demons are mostly the flying wings from the battle with the serpent; they are no doubt the only type of demon able to keep up with true aircraft. A cacodemon certainly couldn't perform those maneuvers.

Their target is nestled down in the center of the crater: an enormous structure, chrome and glowing yellow. It resembles an arthropod, a crab perhaps. Several bulky 'legs' are clamped into the ground as an anchor. Another set of legs are excavators, shoveling everything in their path towards what simply put looks like an enormous maw.

And, lastly, embedded along the spine of the structure: the railgun. It's considerably smaller than VEGA had been expecting, but it is still large enough to do its job. Said job is firing upon a passing section of Hell - a subregion, a continent. It blows mountain sized chunks off with every shot, sending them spinning into the void between islands. As they watch the continent is steadily destroyed, chunk by chunk, until finally some critical threshold is surpassed. The remains of the continent fall into the abyss, and the railgun goes silent again as it waits for a new target to drift into its sights.

"They're demolishing Hell," VEGA breathes, awed. He'd never even considered such a thing _possible_ -

The Slayer full out cackles. _My kind of people_ , he says with a few flicks of his hands, and leaps down to join the fray.


	20. Chapter 20

The battle is complete and utter _chaos_.

Of course anything the Slayer is involved in is chaotic to some degree, he inspires it by his mere presence. This one isn't even his fault, and it's still enough that VEGA has to bring all his focus on it. The demons are packed tight, not quite crowded, they still have enough room to fight and dodge, or attempt to dodge at any rate, but there are _far_ more demons here than VEGA has ever seen in one place. They're all smaller, more agile demons - almost entirely Imps, with Summoners and Hell Knights scattered around, and there are also a few types of demon that VEGA has never seen before. Quite a few are canine - hellhounds, perhaps? Plus there are the flying wings as aerial units, though they have too much altitude to be involved with the Slayer so VEGA is mostly ignoring them.

Yet, despite the arrival of the Doom Slayer, they are all still focused on the aliens. For good reason, they were much easier to kill after all. The pilots of the aircraft are excellent, and the craft themselves are clearly top-notch. VEGA's pretty sure they're pulling off maneuvers that would make a human black out from the g-force. The problem is that there's so few of them in comparison to the massive swarm of demons that all the skill in the world just doesn't cut it.

There are aliens on the ground as well, less than in the air but it's still a decent number of them. There are tanks of some sort, some hovering and some with four spiderlike legs instead. And there's infantry, darting around the tanks - VEGA only catches blurred frames of them when there's gaps between the waves of demons. There's shouting, and a high-pitched feline screech - a warcry, probably? Any specific words are lost in the chaos, not that VEGA would be able to understand them anyway.

The nearest spider-tank staggers under the weight of 20, 30 Imps, and one of its legs collapses under it. A Hell Knight, perhaps? - Irrelevant. VEGA highlights the area for the Slayer. Green, for friendlies; low alert for friendlies in danger. The current target, another Imp, gets its arm ripped clear out of its socket and the Slayer pivots on his heel to run to assist. Imps and Hell Knights alike get barreled through, or as much as one can barrel through a Hell Knight at any rate. A hellhound leaps at the Slayer's six, jaws snapping - VEGA throws up an alert, and he whirls to catch the hound head-on. He rips its head clean in two, straight down the jawline.

There's a startled shout from the direction of the spider-tank. The Slayer's head snaps back up and he sprints forward again -

"Doom Slayer!" Someone shouts. "The Doom Slayer is here!"

\- and VEGA can _understand them_.

The call is taken up by others amidst the screeches of demons, and the feline warcries pick up in volume and frequency. They're coming from above too, from the aircraft? One swoops low, weaponsfire clearing a path for the Slayer to the spider-tank, and what few demons it doesn't shoot it simply rams into. The vortex of air caused by its passing is enough to cause the Slayer to stumble, but he doesn't fall - the demons are not so well-balanced. What the craft hadn't killed the Slayer makes short work of while they're disoriented.

By the time the Slayer makes it to the fallen tank, most of the foot soldiers are dead. One remains, bleeding profusely through a rend across their chest and abdomen. There's a glow, faint but noticeable, and the shine of chrome crawling across their chest - nanites? Even that isn't enough to staunch the blood flow. A human would have long passed out, even a human like the Slayer. VEGA catches a glimpse of something soft and squishy poking out. They've nearly been disemboweled.

"Not today, you bastards!" the feline roars at the Imps harassing them. The weapon they carry - a staff - lights as they whirl it. One end plows half through an Imp's chest and it crumples, instantly dead from the force of the blow. The other end lights up bright blue - a bolt of plasma, crackling upon contact with the air, smashing into a second Imp and sending it sprawling, screeching in pain as it burns -

An Imp leaps at the alien while they try to swing their weapon into position again, and another, and another - that staff is powerful, but they can't move it fast enough to fight an entire crowd, at least not while nearly disemboweled. That's about when the Slayer arrives - out comes the BFG -

It doesn't injure the alien. The stock BFG couldn't distinguish between friend and foe - of course it couldn't, it's a projectile weapon, once it's fired that's it. This is not the stock BFG anymore. VEGA feels the plasma, feels the trajectory, feels the instinctive knowledge of _ally_  and _demon_. How it works - _why_ it works - he has no idea. He'll look into it later. For now, there's a lot of pieces of demon, one panting alien, and a wrecked spider-tank.

The alien has an opaque helmet, but there's a hole smashed into it - through said hole a face with a probable broken nose is visible. There's not a lot of blood, though. They sway, half-propped up by their staff. "Give em Hell, Slayer," they say, and snap off a salute - and finally they pass out. Not dead, there's still a heartbeat and breathing and brain activity - and a lot of nanite activity. It increases, when the alien loses consciousness - why? - Oh. Because it's using the alien's own biomass to repair the critical injury. Having one's bone marrow disassembled from the inside would be excruciatingly painful.

Some of those that VEGA - and the demons, clearly - had thought were dead aren't. One is torn in half, and yet there is low level brain activity. No heartbeat, no breathing, and what living cells remain are quickly dying off - frantic nanite activity though, focused around the brain. A preservation mechanism? Whatever it is, the people are likely still savable in some way; they wouldn't all have roughly the same sort of readings if it wasn't an effort to keep them alive. VEGA tags them for the Slayer; about half of the group attached to the tank is actually still alive. The Slayer won't be extracting them, of course not, even if there were really anywhere _to_  extract them, but .... habit. The Slayer doesn't comment on it, simply drags the upper half of the bisected one to rest beside the tank. Better for the .... wounded? Comatose? Aliens to have some sort of shelter in the battlefield.

The tank shifts. There's a cockpit, but no brain activity - definitely a biomass though, perhaps the tank's armor is blocking the fainter signals. The tank curls its broken legs around the aliens scattered around it, drawing them closer, drawing them partially underneath its bulk - protecting them, VEGA realizes. It crouches half-over them, leaking fluids and nearly defenseless without weapons or any real way to move, and yet it protects them anyway.

"Give them Hell, Doom Slayer," the tank - the tank driver? - says, its voice crisp and cool and nearly inflectionless if not for the cold fury.

The Slayer doesn't need to be told twice. A Summoner warps in, screeches in surprise, and tries to whirl away from the Slayer. It nearly makes it, too, but the Gauss cannon is a precision weapon and the Slayer is _very_  good with it. The explosion attracts the attention of the nearby Imps, and a trio of Hell Knights -

**KILL HIM!** The Duke bellows through the fabric of the plane itself, and VEGA feels the Duke's rage ( _and terror_ ) vibrate through the Praetor Suit. There are a lot of demons, here. Hundreds, if not thousands. The VEGA of a week ago would've been freaking out, because surely one human - even a superhuman - couldn't kill that many and survive.

The VEGA of now is more than ready for his partner to put an end to this.

The Slayer grins at the mob of screaming ( _terrified_ ) demons, and charges.

An Imp disintegrates under the super shotgun; another crowd vanishes in a rocket explosion. Hell Knights, Summoners, hellhounds, everything else: they all fall.

"EIRA," someone shouts, somewhere further down the battlefield. "FOR EIRA." A rally, a warcry. It spreads, repeated in dozens of voices, echoed by gunfire and the feline screams. It does _something_  to the armor. There's adrenaline, and then there's _this_. The belief of a battlefield, distilled to energy, to power. The terror of the demons, and the reinvigorated attacks of the aliens - the armor senses it, and it reacts.

VEGA's awareness .... expands. 1,306 demons, and falling. 28 aliens, and falling. 21 AIs, and falling. There is a path through the mob. The Slayer reacts even as VEGA pushes the telemetry, displays the pattern, displays the path. They move as one. Shoot, reload, dodge. Heal wound, focus power. Rip, and tear.

Their bones rattle as they punch through the skull of a Hell Knight - it's painful, in a distant way. Adrenaline. Healing not required. More power to arm mechanisms. Keep the hand steady. Fire. Switch weapons. Target Summoner first. Done. Imps next. They need to maneuver. Too many Imps. Hellhound on our six, biting down on our leg - use knife, it's too close. Expand our sensor net, keep track of hounds. Done. Ally aerial reinforcement. Steady legs against vortex - move. Flying demons on the tail of ally - gauss cannon? Too much precision required. Rockets. Lock on. Fire. Two hellhounds approaching - fire. Miss. Knife. Stab, withdraw, turn, stab again.

(They've used a blade, before. Longer, more powerful than this. One fragment of them had. They don't consciously remember it, but muscle memory is enough. The sword forms work with a short blade, too.)

The next wave comes. Imps. Easy. Flip knife. Slit throat, slice tendons. Shotgun. Remove arm. Crush head. Sidestep fireball. Forward. Repeat.

Rip.

And.

_Tear._

 

* * *

 

VEGA comes back to himself, disoriented and yet - not. Hyperaware of his surroundings, of the armor, of the Slayer. He'd been - they'd been. They'd been.

There are a _lot_ of dead demons.

It's not all of the mob, not by a long shot, but it's... Well. It's a lot. Their collective terror has finally overridden the will of their Duke, so while they're not exactly fleeing they've backed way off. They're scrambling over each other to stay as far away from the Slayer as possible. The aircraft are still harassing them, here and there, but their attention has turned to regrouping now that they have the chance. About half of the aircraft are retreating back toward their home base - some of them on fire, smoking, or just flying unsteadily. The ground troops however are not retreating, merely clumping close together. There's... Not very many of them left, all told. If the Slayer hadn't shown up when he had...

_Follow?_ The Slayer asks. He's staring down the demon mob from across the battlefield. It appears to be having the desired effect.

He could continue the fight, certainly. He's injured, yes, but it's all minor cuts and burns. There had been so many demons for him to kill that the Praetor Suit had no shortage of demonic energy to absorb. Still. He's asking. And fighting now, without the backup from the aliens - it would be much more difficult, even with the demons as beaten down as they are. They'd overwhelm him with sheer numbers alone, eventually.

"I think so, yes," VEGA replies. "You're good, but you're not that good."

He snorts. The message is clear even without signing: yeah, okay, if you say so. The adrenaline is still rushing through him; he shakes with every step as he works to restrain himself. He turns his back on the mob. VEGA considers protesting, but well. It's not like he can't sense every demon out there. If any of them move to attack, he'll know.

The ground is slick with blood, fluids from the alien vehicles, and the remains of demons. And some of the aliens, as well; even with their mastery of nanotechnology they can't do much if someone is crushed by a Hell Knight. The Slayer returns to the spider tank from earlier. Its driver has managed to gather several more comatose soldiers under it, and it's also actually able to walk now, albeit wobbly. 

"Doom Slayer," the driver says. VEGA wonders why they haven't gotten out - protection? It wasn't like the tank was irreparable, but surely it would have been faster to get out and move people rather than waiting for the vehicle to self repair. Then again perhaps they had, it wasn't like VEGA had quite been paying attention for a while there.  The tank bows. There's really no other way to put it, it tilts its front half forward so that its undercarriage is scraping the dirt. "Thank you."

The Slayer is taken aback, for all that it doesn't show in his posture. He just nods, but those two words have suddenly made him way more interested. VEGA wonders if anyone has ever thanked him for his crusade before. Probably not, considering the current track record for that kind of thing.

Energy builds, surrounding the tank and the people its driver is protecting - VEGA recognizes this, it's used for teleportation. A dimensional tether? - no, much smaller, more focused. Local teleportation, back to the home base. No wonder the aliens had been clumping up rather than retreating. The visual effect is different from the UAC's attempts at creating the technology, no white light and no static. There's a strange flicker instead, like a film reel played at the wrong speed, half-images flicking past before vanishing entirely. There's a shallow crater left behind - they took the dirt surrounding the comatose people too, and most of the actual corpses as well. For proper death rites maybe?

The Slayer's own tether activates. It's not a grab, not like the UAC technology creates. It's a gentle push. A question, waiting for a response. VEGA can decline it if he wants. He has no idea how he can even understand that much - surely their technology was too different for instantaneous translation like this? Another mystery for later.

"Do you want to go with them?"

The Slayer is eyeing the demons, who are not going to be hanging back forever. Some sections of the mob are already starting to move - whoever or whatever was controlling the teleporter was smart though and had moved the people farthest from the Slayer first. There's still space to run, if he wants, and there's still several craft circling overhead. They'd provide cover fire, if VEGA declined the request, though for how long is anyone's guess.

The Slayer shrugs before nodding. VEGA confirms the request. How he knows how to do that is ... Well. It's a strange, instinctive sense. At this point he's just going to chalk it up to weird Hell bullshit thanks to the Suit and call it a day. 

There is a great rumble, and the Slayer turns as the teleport begins - the structure is pulling up from the mountain, its legs curling up and under. It's a _ship_ , VEGA realizes -

\- and the teleport brings them in.


	21. Chapter 21

VEGA has never experienced UAC teleportation before, at least not firsthand, and certainly not with the kind of sensory feedback that the Praetor Suit and the Slayer himself provide. He's inclined to believe this is similar though, albeit more stable. The Slayer doesn't drop a few centimeters down for one, or even stumble like people often did. 42% of the teleportation experiment subjects had complained of nausea afterwards, which was psychosomatic as far as the UAC had been able to determine. The Slayer doesn't feel nauseous, so either that wasn't an issue here or he was one of the unaffected 58%.

They end up in a large room, off at one side, several meters away from anyone else. There's some crates and canisters of what appear to be various mixtures of minerals, alloys, and gases, but nothing living or otherwise complex. VEGA thinks the room might be a converted cargo bay; there is a crane-hook hanging from the ceiling, but only one. A room of this size would require a lot more than one, advanced technology or no.

The room, whatever it used to be, is now being used as a mix of a triage center and repair bay. There's a fuzzy division between people on one half and vehicles on the other, though even that mostly just seems to be the worst damaged of each type shoved far away from the opposite type. The middle is a fairly even mix of banged-up vehicles and walking wounded.

"Liftoff in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 -"

The Slayer braces himself on the nearest crate in anticipation of the liftoff being rough. It's not really, not like any of the UAC vessels would have been. There's vibration and the deep thrum of _power_  under the deck plating as whatever the ship uses for propulsion fires up, but nothing falls over, hardly anything even wobbles. Several of the people working on the more severely wounded people/damaged vehicles brace their patients/devices though, so perhaps whatever they were doing required extreme precision and therefore advance warning.

There's small crates of... Something being delivered to the worst wounded and most damaged vehicles. Energized nanites, he thinks. They shine brightly, moving in a swarm to wherever they need to go. VEGA watches a medic (?) upend a crate onto one of the comatose people, and then shove several corpse pieces next to the injured person. The nanites quickly start disassembling the pieces and transferring biomass to the living person. So... not burial rites, then. Recycling. Very unusual for a society to treat their dead in this way - perhaps a consequence of their time in Hell? Usable materials for organic repair would be in short supply after all.

(He wonders, briefly, what Doctor Hayden or Pierce would have done with such technology. Cured themselves of their ailments, of course, but... neither of them would stop there. Probably better to not think about it.)

Nearest to the Slayer, in the walking wounded section of the room, there are two people. One is sitting on the nose of a battered aircraft with their arms around their knees; the other is leaning against some unidentifiable wreckage with their hand pressed to their stomach. VEGA realizes he recognizes the second one - their fur is very distinctive. Most of the aliens are shades of yellow and tan with brown markings, but this one is white and red. The nanites work _fast_ for the person to be standing and lucid when just a short while ago their insides were outsides.

VEGA tags the familiar face for the Slayer. Had to start somewhere, might as well start with someone who had reacted positively to him. Not that any of these people were likely to react negatively, but, well. The Slayer doesn't disagree with VEGA's choice, anyway; he starts forward, relaxed but with his assault rifle still held loosely in his hand. Nobody notices him, at first, too preoccupied with their own conversations and/or work - until he gets within 3m of the tail end of the aircraft.

The sitting alien's head jerks up and toward the Slayer, their ears pinned back. The instinctive reaction disappears a moment later, to be replaced with surprise. The two aliens look at each other for a moment before they both straighten. Conversations start dying down and heads start to turn toward the Slayer - one of them had sent out a communication alerting the others?

There is clearly a silent debate between the white alien and their beige companion, complete with significant glances. It's the beige alien that approaches, cautious but not fearful. Like one would approach a flighty animal. Probably for the best, the Slayer is still coming down from his adrenaline high, any sudden movements were likely to provoke twitch reactions.

They open their mouth, and .... what comes out isn't English, or anything else VEGA knows. Alright, so why can't he understand this one? He gives them more than a cursory visual scan and discovers that they're a _hologram_. Well. Alright. Definitely much higher quality than the UAC holograms, then. But where are the emitters? The ceiling is too far, and there's a tarp on the floor...

VEGA nudges his finding at the Slayer, who squints at the hologram - okay, it wasn't just VEGA who was astonished at the quality of it, good - but otherwise doesn't react. There's an awkward silence for a few moments before the Slayer shakes his head. The hologram glances back and then says something else. The Slayer shakes his head to that, too.

The white-furred alien limps closer, coming to stand beside the hologram. "Doom Slayer?" they ask. Same voice - definitely the same person.

The Slayer stares down at the much shorter alien, impassive. (Do you measure a cat person from the top of their head or the tips of their ears? Some of them had pretty long ears. VEGA decides it's not important right now.) Even from his unique vantage point VEGA doesn't have much idea of what's going through the Slayer's head. Threat assessment, maybe. Whatever he's thinking, he comes to a decision a moment later, nodding and snapping out a salute.

The alien grins. "Wasn't sure if you'd remember me. So - alright." they straighten up a little bit more, wincing and pressing harder against their stomach. "Captain Ceruven Azimuth, at your service, sir. And this is Commander Kismet. It's an honor, sir - and thanks for the save."

The hologram - Commander Kismet - salutes as well. It - they? They don't look as excited as Captain Azimuth, but they certainly look curious. They're leaning forward a little, tilting their head as though to see the Slayer from multiple angles. Could the hologram actually see, somehow, or was it just a visual thing?

_Doom Slayer,_ the Slayer introduces himself with his recently chosen namesign. VEGA is still kinda weirdly pleased with the whole thing - that he'd been able to offer something clearly so important to him. Though VEGA doesn't think introductions are actually necessary here, considering the circumstances... _And V-E-G-A,_ the Slayer adds, totally disproving VEGA's last thought. He - hadn't expected that. For all that the Slayer had decided they should be partners, VEGA had assumed he'd be more of a background element. In hindsight, 'background element' wasn't part of his partner's vocabulary...

Of course, Hell only translates speech - not ASL. Time to see if the translation works if the source of the speech is an AI. "I am VEGA, an artificial intelligence installed to the Doom Slayer's armor. My partner prefers signing to speech - he says hello."

Captain Azimuth perks up at that. The hologram looks back and forth, clearly not understanding. So... the Praetor Suit's Hellish origins were doing something here, then. VEGA's not exactly surprised, but damn if it isn't going to take hours to figure out the whys behind it. "Oh! We didn't realize - the Testaments didn't mention you?" The hologram says something, and Azimuth quickly translates. "Sorry Kis - that was VEGA, he's part of the armor. They both say hello."

Kismet looks between the Captain and the Slayer, and asks something. "Kis wants to know if you're like brainmates - his sister's one, so it's a personal interest, you understand."

Military, but very relaxed military, VEGA notes. At least they can understand each other for the most part, alien AIs notwithstanding. There were enough organics to serve as translators there anyway. "I'm afraid something is lost in translation here - what do you mean by brainmates?"

"Kis, how did Sol describe -" the hologram interjects. "- Yeah. Two as one. They share a body and a mind."

Well. No. Perhaps, in the loosest sense... The Slayer shakes his head. At least that gesture requires no speech to translate.

Captain Azimuth nods. "Figured; it's rare outside of Eira. So - Deucalion'll be here shortly, he's the closest thing we have to a diplomat right now. He'll want to check you both over, anyway. Just... Wanted to say thanks. I thought I was a dead man."

The Slayer nods but doesn't sign anything, so VEGA doesn't say anything either. For all that he was the de facto speaker (well. Only speaker.) For the two of them he's lacking the Slayer's general autonomy and self-assured nature. Besides, it was probably better to wait on this Deucalion to start a true dialogue.

(Also, once VEGA starts asking questions he's sure as fuck not going to be able to stop. Really, what were the odds of two unrelated species sharing gesture meanings? Especially things like smiles, humans were unique on _Earth_  in that respect. Showing one's teeth was not, generally, a positive signal. VEGA has _so many questions_.)

Thankfully he doesn't have to wait long; Captain Azimuth was very nearly being literal when he said 'a moment' it turns out. Another hologram flickers into existence out of what looks like thin air. At this point VEGA's pretty sure they're not holograms despite having the same energy signatures, it wasn't like they matched in any other way.

This alien is the tallest VEGA has seen so far; they stand head and shoulders over Azimuth and Kismet, and over the Slayer himself by 10cm or so for that matter. They're bulky too, built for strength rather than speed as most of the aliens seem to be. There's a set of symmetrical scars on this one's cheeks. Location and symmetry implies cultural significance - scarification? A symbol of power and/or strength? For aesthetics only?

"I am the concierge Deucalion," the AI says, in perfectly understandable English.

Okay, so why was the translation working for _this_  AI, but not the other AI? There's more to this, VEGA's sure of it now. Something's different about this one.

"You can understand me?"

The Slayer nods.

Deucalion returns the nod. He smiles a little bit. It's probably supposed to be a softer expression, but the scars just make it look fierce. "I'm glad. I know Hell's translation doesn't work properly for most kin - it's good to know that we can understand one another. Do either of you have wounds that require treatment?"

AIs most certainly have an unusual social status in this society - well, of course they do, the diplomat is an AI. VEGA suspects he might also be the AI in control of the ship, though whether there were officers above him remained to be seen. Either way, everyone is making an effort to include VEGA in everything and quite frankly it's incredibly weird. He's not entirely sure he likes it. Please let me go back to being the helpful voice in the ceiling, thank you.

The Slayer shakes his head and exhales, very pointed. It's not quite a sigh or a snort but it's too pointed to _not_  be a reaction. At being underestimated, probably. "The armor is self-healing," VEGA adds on. "And it heals the Slayer as well."

Deucalion glances sideways, down at the Captain and Commander. The Captain shrugs, just a little, and Deucalion clasps his hands in front of himself. "VEGA - are you a sapient?"

So yes, AIs definitely had a special status here. Perhaps there are social protocols that VEGA is meant to follow that he isn't aware of? "I am, yes."

"Hm," Deucalion says. It's a bit difficult to read microexpressions on a cat face, but VEGA is fairly sure there's a little frown there now. There's not a whole lot he can really do about it though, so he doesn't say anything. The Slayer doesn't seem to have picked up any new hostility or anything so... It's probably fine.

"If you - either of you - need anything, please let me know. In the meantime, I'm sure you have questions. Please follow me; we'll see if there's any food onboard that doesn't make you sick."

 

* * *

 

_What do you think?_ The Slayer asks as they follow Deucalion through the ship. In direct contrast to the spacious triage/repair bay the corridors are quite cramped and not nearly as well lit. It gives the impression of being underground; the brown paneling doesn't help either. Very clean though, not a hint of dust or debris.

"I don't understand how half of their technology works, but otherwise I think we're in good hands. They certainly seem to worship you."

The Slayer snorts. For all that Deucalion has to know the Slayer is signing behind his back, he doesn't react to it. VEGA's not entirely sure he can't hear his half of the conversation, internal speakers or not, but it's not an issue at the moment. If he has to he can always display text or perhaps even sign back. _Good feeling from them. Think they're ok._

The Slayer's instincts had been good so far, no reason to doubt them now. Plus if nothing else they were certainly dedicated to destroying Hell just as much as the Slayer himself was. Worst case scenario, the enemy of my enemy.

"Do you have allergies?" Deucalion asks, very polite. He'd waited precisely long enough to be sure that VEGA wasn't going to reply to the Slayer, too. VEGA makes a note to himself to use text messages instead from now on. "I understand nut allergies are especially common among humans."

So there was a link there. Somehow. The Slayer tilts his head at Deucalion's back before shaking his head.

"Alright. We'll have to be careful, regardless; our resident human had a near fatal reaction to one of our meats. I doubt you're quite as ... Immunocompromised as he was, but I'd hate to accidentally injure you." Deucalion glances over his shoulder and grins a little. "It'd be quite the anticlimactic end to your crusade."

(Our resident human? Was there a human on board? A human as VEGA knew them, or a near-human like the Slayer?)

The Slayer eyes him for a moment, impassive as usual. Whatever he sees in Deucalion's expression makes him relax though, and all the way this time. VEGA bleeds off the last of the battle-ready surplus power as the Slayer finally stores his rifle. Full trust it was. _Prefer to not choke and die, yeah_ , he says.

"My partner says he'd prefer to not choke and die," VEGA translates. It's a bit awkward - maybe he could create a second vocalization database to serve as the Slayer's voice? It would simplify the translation process if it were obvious whose words they were. If they stayed with the aliens for an extended period it might become essential.

"I'd really prefer you didn't, too," Deucalion says with a laugh. He comes to a stop beside a door that from the outside looks identical to all the other doors they've walked past. "I have no intention of helping the demons in any way, believe me." The grin turns sharp and vicious. "We've spent far too long destroying them for that. Please - this way."

The door clicks - unlocks? - before clunking open. The room is small and nearly bare; there is a couch inset on one wall with a small table in front of it, what looks like cupboards on another wall, and otherwise there is nothing else. It's just a plain brown room.

The Slayer investigates the cupboards before he sits, because that's the sort of thing he does, really. Deucalion doesn't look offended or anything by it at least. There's nothing recognizable in them - a few small canisters of various mixtures, but nothing aside from that. They're definitely not meant to be food, at least not for organics. With his very short investigation concluded the Slayer gingerly sits down. The armor's not really made for it, and a free standing chair would crumple under the weight of it. The inset couch is just fine though.

Deucalion has space to sit on the couch, but he doesn't. Instead he just ... Conjures up his own chair and sits in that. The benefits of being a holographic display, VEGA supposes. The door opens again and a second copy of Deucalion's holographic avatar walks in with a few containers stacked one on top of another. Handy, that. Also interesting in that he made no effort to appear more personlike in the sense of only appearing in one place at a time. Whatever status AIs have here, they're not expected to behave exactly like the people. "Food for you to try - I've scanned for foods that will react poorly with basic human biology, but we don't have much experience with stock human immune systems. Jokes aside, please let me know if you experience any nausea or inflammation."

They honest to god look like little takeout containers. Each one has something different in it - a sort of salad in one, chunks of a strange corkscrew vegetable in another, whole caramelized insects in another. Admittedly none of it looks particularly appetizing by human standards, or at least going by the data VEGA had collected on the humans he'd overseen. Good thing the Slayer isn't very picky. He examines the containers' contents through their translucent lids, makes a bit of a face at the insects, and apparently decides it's better than the ration packs he's been eating for however long.

_Go ahead, V. You'll know what to ask better than me. I'll have my hands full anyway._ The whole learning your behaviors thing has been a mutual development apparently. Not that figuring out that VEGA wants to ask _so many questions_ was particularly hard, probably. The Slayer looks at Deucalion for a moment before shrugging and removing his helmet. There's a moment's pause, and then surprise followed by relief. _No Hell smell. Thank fuck._

Do the aliens have a sense of smell comparable to Earth cats? Might explain their excellent air filtration system. The UAC had never managed to scrub away the lingering scent of Hell, but for the most part it had thankfully not been a problem. "I imagine that should improve the taste of food considerably," VEGA offers diplomatically. It doubles as a sort of translation as well; judging by the small smile Deucalion now has he's picked up on it.

"Those of us with the ability to smell were adamant that I figure out a way to keep the scent of Hell out - I'm glad I've succeeded by the standards of your nose as well." The hologram turns away as the Slayer starts prodding at the vegetables with the two tined fork provided - perhaps it was considered impolite to watch someone eat? Though VEGA can't imagine that Deucalion doesn't have hidden cameras in the room. Perhaps it was only blatant observation that was frowned upon.

"I have a few things I should say before you begin asking questions. Firstly, both of you are free to wander the ship; there are no off limits areas. VEGA - if you're able to uplink to my network you are welcome to integrate yourself as much as you please. Doom Slayer - when you leave this room I must ask that you remain fully armored and keep your air filtration system running, for your own safety. Our immune systems are considerably stronger than yours, and there have been incidents in the past involving others catching our pathogens."

Well that was kind of ominous. The Slayer stops with his first bite of alien food in his mouth, giving Deucalion a look. He starts chewing, slowly, gesturing vaguely down at the rest of the vegetables. VEGA scans the food more thoroughly; nothing comes up as potentially dangerous, but the Praetor Suit wasn't tailored for that sort of thing. VEGA starts fiddling with the sensors in the hopes of getting more in depth readings.

"The food is sterile," Deucalion reassures him. "It's kept sealed from when it was processed for that exact reason."

VEGA doesn't quite think that food can be _sterile_ , it's sort of the exact opposite of what food is. He decides to chalk it up to a mistranslation and leave it be. Also, if the alien pathogens were able to infect a human it was nothing short of a miracle that the Slayer hadn't gotten sick on their planet. "Are there particular symptoms we should keep an eye out for? My partner was unarmored for an extended period on your planet."

Deucalion shakes his head. "If he had fallen ill then, he would be severely impaired if not dead now. The few pathogens we haven't eradicated are deadly to those without our defenses."

_That's reassuring,_ the Slayer twitches out with his free hand, under the table. He starts eating again anyway. Apparently the vegetables at least are tasty enough that he's not too bothered by the chance of death by alien superbug.

"It's unlikely any such pathogens are onboard; this is merely a precaution. Now - feel free to ask me anything. I will answer what I can."


	22. Chapter 22

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Infodump time!

VEGA hardly knows where to start. The silence drags on, but Deucalion waits patiently. He doesn't shift, but he's not still either; if VEGA was still restricted by the Praetor Suit's AI he might not have even been able to tell this was a hologram. There's breathing, blinking, idle eye movements, small adjustments in posture. VEGA's willing to bet there's a simulated heartbeat too. Whatever's inside it scans as indistinct static, but that could mean anything. It could be solid, hollow, or just as realistic all the way through, there's no way to tell. Would it bleed if it was cut? How far does the simulation of life go?

"I suppose I should begin by asking you the name of the species you were created by, if there is one," VEGA finally settles on.

For some reason this makes Deucalion glance at the Slayer - or specifically at the helmet. He looks amused, but... Sad, too. "We're eirans," he replies. "Of the planet Eira. Everyone aboard this ship is a lombax, but not all eirans are lombaxes - back home there are qarndi and saiph in significant amounts as well. You're from a segregated world, aren't you?"

A what now? "I'm afraid there's a translation issue here."

Deucalion nods like this confirms it. "Kin - what you call artificial intelligences, I think - are of equal status on Eira to kith. We have been since the Great War, 322 years ago. My cohort didn't create me as a servant, they created me as their child. All the kin have the same origins."

VEGA doesn't even know what to say to that. He'd never considered such a thing. It seemed like... Like an immutable constant. Why wouldn't the created be the servant of the creator? It seemed... Incredibly nerve-wracking, honestly. Having to choose, like humans did. Then again... At least they had the ability to make choices that had real effects on the world. Not merely choosing something so small as to _care_.

"I'm 212 years old," Deucalion continues. "The oldest living eiran, as a matter of fact. Even when I was young I only knew two kin who had experienced the time before we were equals under law; even they, as third generation kin, weren't treated as lesser in their youths. I know most societies aren't like this - I admit I can't understand it. I hope your cohort treated you well, at least?"

"Yes," VEGA says, at the same time as the Slayer scowls and shakes his head. He baps the helmet and jabs a finger at it.

_Bad V-E-G-A,_ he says. _Doc is an asshole and I bet the rest were too._ To Deucalion he adds, _His dad tried to kill him._

Oh, god, Doctor Hayden was basically his father, that was one revelation that VEGA really hadn't needed, _thank you Slayer_  - "Well - no, that's not quite - I agreed with the plan, it's just..."

_He fucked with your...._ He makes an expansive, vague gesture. _...Everything. don't even try to hide it._

(Deucalion is smiling, just a little - a tiny uptick in the corner of his mouth.)

_I saved your ass,_ the Slayer adds, and nods like it's final. He's... Well. He isn't entirely wrong. VEGA thinks about pointing out that the Slayer had gone along with it without deviation until the final moments of it, but decides it's not worth it. (...even if it might be good payback for the - familial revelation. No wonder the Slayer had immediately latched on to Doctor Hayden's ... Shortcomings in that area, humans generally had a poor view of such things.) 

"Dare I ask?" Deucalion says. The smile's spread to the other corner of his mouth.

VEGA tries to evade the question. "It's... Complicated," It wasn't like it was ... Private or anything, it was just - an unneeded tangent. Learning about actual aliens was way more interesting than rehashing the ways he'd been treated in the past. It wasn't like the majority of it had actually bothered him, anyway.

The Slayer rolls his eyes and huffs but doesn't add anything, miraculously. VEGA will take what he can get.

Deucalion nods. "I won't ask, then. Continue, VEGA?"

Yes fucking please, VEGA thinks, not quite exasperated. Though he can't say he really minds this protectiveness that has developed. (VEGA wonders if this is a thing that happens regularly with the Slayer or if there's something about his behavior that prompts it. Either is possible.)

"You know of humans - you mentioned that a human had contact with your kind?"

"Ah, yes. His name is Dan - very sweet man." He eyes the helmet for a moment. "I can tell you that neither he nor Eira's finest minds know how he was moved to our world, and certainly not why. I don't think he is from the Earth you know, however - or if he is there has been a significant time displacement."

The Slayer cocks his head at Deucalion, chewing slowly. _Alternate reality?_

Another human like the Slayer? Or something else? "From another reality, or universe?"

"Possibly, yes. He described Earth as being far less technologically advanced than your armor implies, and the humans weren't yet able to construct the first of their kin. We searched for Earth right up until the demonic invasion, based upon his description of its star system and the surrounding region, but we never found it. We have no idea whether he was displaced through time, space, universes, or some combination of the three."

Okay. That was... Not at all what VEGA had been expecting. He doesn't know _what_ he'd expected but it sure as fuck wasn't that. "Was there demonic involvement, perhaps?" Considering the displacement... Well, Hell had a tendency to at least warp the first two of the three. Warping universes seemed like a reasonable addition to that considering the Slayer himself.

Deucalion shakes his head. "No. The energy burst that coincided with his arrival was unlike anything else we've ever recorded. We've been trying to mimic it for years with no success. I expect if there had been demonic involvement he'd have come through much less... Intact."

Good point. Demons were not exactly known for their subtlety. Or gentleness.

_V, ask about the little thing the alien from before did?_ He holds his hand out, palm up, to demonstrate. VEGA has to think back for a moment - the little human hologram it had held in its palm, right.

"In the ruined city we traveled through we encountered another AI - I don't believe we got their name?" The Slayer shakes his head. "I couldn't understand them at the time. They displayed a small hologram of a human, like so."

"Ah - I did wonder how you'd found us. That would be Eidolon; we constructed the prototype for our dimensional teleporter in his city." He shakes his head. "I'm afraid I don't have Dan's schematics on hand - he was a citizen of Eidolon, we were merely acquaintances. The human Eidolon showed you was undoubtedly him - before you he was the only example we had of humanity."

The Slayer nods and goes back to investigating the other containers. He's polished off the entire box of corkscrew vegetables; apparently they were pretty good. The name Eidolon, though... Is it a translation, or simply a coincidence? It's an English word, albeit an obscure one. Come to think of it - all of them save Deucalion himself have had English words in their names. It can't be a coincidence, not with three out of four. A cultural difference in how their society forms names?

"I wonder if there's something more going on here," Deucalion muses. "With all three of you being of Earth - I imagine the odds of such a thing are very small."

It's a good point. Earth isn't anything special as far as VEGA knows; of course there'd been theories that sapience was rare, but this now seems thoroughly disproved. Deucalion had mentioned two sapient species aside from his own after all, and there were probably more. Humanity likely just wasn't advanced enough to reach their neighbors. Still... The eirans' technology was far more advanced than humanity's, it was a shame that they had never found Earth, if there was anything unusual about the planet they'd have a much better chance of finding it. However...

"Do you have experience in deciphering data from extraterrestrial sources? There is a dimensional tether installed to the Praetor Suit, linked back to another planet in Earth's solar system. Perhaps you might be able to make use of the data?"

"We might," Deucalion says slowly. "I'm no translator - perhaps one of my passengers may have studied data translation as a hobby. I'll put a request out. I haven't felt your attempt to connect - have you tried? Or are our systems too different?"

"I have not seriously made an effort," VEGA admits. "I can feel the flow of energy, but it's nothing like what I'm used to." Also to be honest he's a little worried of actually managing to make a connection - the Praetor Suit's track record for that wasn't good, even if he did have near total control over it now. There was every chance that he'd make a connection and then be unable to stop the torrent of data. It would be an unpleasant experience for everyone involved.

Deucalion hums, lacing his fingers together. "It's unfortunate that I didn't keep data on what we knew of Earth; undoubtedly it would have helped here. I can't say any of us expected to run into people from Earth in Hell - we hadn't realized the Doom Slayer was human." He turns to face the Slayer for a moment. "Though your schematics are... Not quite base human, are they?"

The Slayer holds Deucalion's gaze for a few seconds before nodding. He doesn't offer anything more though, despite what he'd shared with VEGA pretty quickly. Score one for VEGA apparently being someone who inspired trust? Maybe it was something to do with him being wary of those in power or something. Deucalion is almost certainly in command of this ship, there hasn't been any mention of a command structure above him. And that comment about 'Eidolon's city'...

"You mentioned that the city itself was also called Eidolon?"

It's something of a tangent, but Deucalion doesn't comment on it. "Yes - his was the first city we built on Eira, after we arrived there. We had to rebuild our society from the ground up, and we needed someone to keep ourselves organized. Eidolon and I were the only major kin that had survived, and thus the only ones able to take on the workload, so we each became the concierge of our own cities. We continued the practice even after our population stabilized; all of our cities grow from us as we grow in turn from them."

So. Less leaders, more overseers? That sounded like it could get very dystopian very fast unless there were checks in place. How would you balance against what was apparently a special class of complex AI? You... Probably couldn't. VEGA suddenly has a bad feeling about this. If the Slayer's narrowed eyes are any indication he's come to the same conclusion.

Deucalion continues on. If he's noticed the Slayer's reaction he doesn't show it. "My city didn't get quite as destroyed in the invasion as Eidolon did - I could have stayed, but I volunteered for this. I was the only one of us with experience; before I was a city, I was a warship. You never really forget how to wage a war." He smiles. It's not a very nice smile. "I can't say I planned going out as a warship, but I suppose there's a nice sort of symmetry to it."

Well that was a lot to take in at once. _Warship_ implied that they had a full fledged military - of course VEGA isn't going to judge them for that, but coupled with the command these AIs had over their cities... If the alien military was anything at all like human militaries the city of Deucalion at least might very well have had a full military dictatorship. How unified was their world? Were the cities also their own countries? Why the mention of cities but not smaller settlements - even an advanced species would have individuals living in smaller towns here and there wouldn't it? Or... Had they been subjugated out of existence?

Instead of asking any of that VEGA instead says, "You volunteered?"

"Yes - we are all volunteers." He gestures vaguely, presumably to encompass the ship and all its personnel. "Quite honestly our assault on Hell was intended as a suicide mission from its inception; we have no way home under our own power. We weren't going to sit back and take the invasion, not this time. Besides, demolishing Hell is a spectacular way to go."

The Slayer points his fork at Deucalion as if to say _see? He gets it._  VEGA doesn't but also is not going to argue. How many people are aboard this ship? There'd been something like 50 unique biosigns/mobile vehicles in the battle; AIs were counted as people too, here. The ship was large enough to comfortably hold far more than that - not all of them would have been in the battle, some would have been recovering from injuries or in stasis. And if the amount of wreckage they've found is any indication the aircraft at least have not all returned to home base. The amount of casualties they've sustained must be staggering.

"Have you had interactions with Hell in the past? You mentioned you were invaded before."

"Not by Hell, no - we learned of them six months ago, entirely on accident. I don't know the details, I'm no scientist, but I do know dimensional experimentation was involved. It saved us twice and we're nothing if not paranoid about that now. Eira's not our planet of origin, merely where we settled after we fled the last invasion we were subject to." He shakes his head, sighing. For all that his facial expressions are remarkably human VEGA still feels weird assigning human meanings to the microexpressions, but... VEGA would be willing to bet the look Deucalion has now is the sort of thousand-yard stare that veterans of war get on occasion. "I suppose our paranoia punished us. At least we're not in danger of extinction this time."

Every question that Deucalion answers prompts several more. At this rate they're going to be at this for hours, assuming the Slayer has the patience to wait that long. Perhaps the most concerning so far is the mention of invasions by things other than demons - was that another problem the UAC would have to contend with? Hell was bad enough, but to nearly kill off a species at this level of advancement would take ability beyond what Hell could muster. For all their power they were rather stupid and couldn't figure out any technology more advanced than a rifle. If this 'Great War' had anything to do with it the eirans' technology had undoubtedly advanced since then, but... Even then they had possessed advanced AI, they had to have been on par with Earth at the very least.

VEGA's partway through formulating what exactly to ask when Deucalion turns sharply to focus on a point on the far wall. "A group of leviathans have entered my sensor range." He hisses, baring his teeth in what's definitely not meant to be a smile. "The damn things keep finding me faster and faster every time I lift off. I'm sorry, we'll have to cut this short. I will have to devote my focus to the battle and the tactical network for my fighter squadrons." He stands, grimacing. "Or what's left of them."

The Slayer stands up, all thoughts of eating abandoned at the mention of demons attacking. _Help?_  he signs. There's no need for translation, here, it's pretty obvious what the Doom Slayer wants to do.

Deucalion eyes him. "Can you fly? - no, that won't work, there's too much of a learning curve on the kith fighters." He looks the Slayer up and down. "But your armor... we might be able to modify it for flight. A wingsuit, or a pack...."

The Slayer practically lights up at that. VEGA can't say he minds the idea of it either, even if they can't do it fast enough for this battle or its otherwise not useful for battle at least he'd have some way to slow the Slayer's inevitable future falls. "If you can spare the time and resources, we'd be happy to assist."

Deucalion looks away for a moment, calculating. VEGA is for a moment bizarrely reminded of Doctor Hayden. There were many recordings of him from before the mechanical body; he'd always gotten the same sort of expression when presented with a particularly difficult problem. " -Yes," Deucalion says, finally. "Replace your helmet, please, quickly. I'll show you to Bay 5, Euclid's going to make an attempt to build you something usable."

The helmet's already half on before Deucalion finishes his sentence. Deucalion strides out, much faster than he'd been walking before. The Slayer half-jogs to keep up. There's not much difference in the length of their strides - it's just that a hologram only has to pay the barest attention to physics. It's not visually obvious unless you're looking at his feet, but his movement isn't quite matching the animation.

_Chance of invasion?_

Of boarding, VEGA realizes. The demons could teleport anywhere there was space and no energy interference; the eirans surely had developed a defense against it just like the UAC had but with an attack from the outside there was a chance that their method would fail just as the UAC's had. "Is boarding a concern?"

"Always," Deucalion says, grimly. The vibration has throttled up but the ship is still otherwise silent. There's no alarm klaxons, no distant shouting. "We need to keep them off my engines; if they cause a power fluctuation they will get in when the ADA stutters, we've learned that from experience." He looks over his shoulder at the Slayer, not breaking his stride for a moment. Perks of not actually having to look where you're going. "Bay 5 is reconstruction - what you'd call critical care. Most of the people there aren't conscious, never mind ambulatory. If the demons do get in and you're still onboard please protect them as well as you can. I wouldn't expect you to do otherwise, and they should be a low priority target regardless, but..." He grimaces again, trailing off.

But the demons' cruelty won't stop for comatose soldiers, VEGA finishes. And for all the Eirans' technology even they couldn't keep up at this pace. The Slayer for his part simply nods and summons his shotgun.

Deucalion returns it. "Thank you."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Unfortunately my fixation on Doom has disappeared again so probably no updates until Eternal's release, alas. Sorry guys, thank ya'll for reading <3
> 
> Also, there is now a [Youtube playlist](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL_IA0SBIy-MVweYDsww0BG7mry5Bl7pxi%22), if you're a themesong fiend like me lmao


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